Meet the MycoMeditations Team: Experience, Care, and Support

How The MycoMeditations Team Creates World-Class Psilocybin Retreats

Since its inception in 2014, MycoMeditations has provided therapeutic psilocybin experiences in Jamaica. Over the years, the MycoMeditations team of therapists and facilitators has pioneered legal psilocybin therapy within the company’s immersive retreat settings, often called the gold standard of psilocybin retreats.

For people interested in psilocybin retreats, it’s important to understand the knowledge, skills, and expertise that the MycoMeditations retreat team brings that warrant the retreat's reputation. The experience, background, and training of the MycoMeditations therapy team play a key role in facilitating transformative experiences for guests that result in proven outcomes across depression, anxiety, and PTSD.

In this article, we will introduce each role on the MycoMeditations therapy team and describe how these roles together create a unique system that safely and effectively support guests through our psychedelic therapy immersions.

This team-based model supports guests across the full arch of a retreat: preparation before arrival, therapeutic care during psilocybin sessions, and integration support after guests return home.

It’s worth clarifying that this article focuses on the therapy team. The wider MycoMeditations team includes a dedicated hospitality team and operational staff, both of which are equally paramount to the overall retreat experience for which MycoMeditations is known. But, for the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the therapy side of our team and the guest psychological support structure.

The Roles Within the MycoMeditations Therapy Team

The therapy side of the MycoMeditations team covers several essential roles, each of which has its own set of responsibilities within the therapy team’s overarching system to create the most immersive, supportive retreat setting possible. Individual team members within each role offer complementary experience, skills, and training backgrounds to best benefit guests.

Retreat Leader: Guiding Dosing Decisions, Guest Support, and Therapeutic Direction

Every MycoMeditations psilocybin retreat has one retreat leader within the therapy team. The retreat leader is typically the most experienced therapist on the team. Often, therapists become candidates for this position only after facilitating 20+ retreats. This means they have personally worked with approximately 200 guests undergoing psilocybin therapy and have overseen 600 psilocybin therapy sessions at MycoMeditations before earning this role on the therapy team.

For all of our Bluefields Bay retreats, MycoMeditations CEO and Head Facilitator, Justin Townsend, is the retreat leader, making this an appealing option for those who’d like to work directly with him as the company's direct leader and owner.

Some of the unique responsibilities involved in the retreat leader position include:

• Leading the first day’s opening introduction session, where each guest shares their story, their reasons for joining the MycoMeditations retreat, and the struggles they’re looking to address. The retreat leader works with each guest to orient their story towards the upcoming psilocybin therapy experiences. This includes how best to approach the experience and how it might impact them, based on what they’ve shared with us.
• Providing what we call “flight instructions” on the first day, before the first dosing session. Following the introduction session, our “flight instructions” are a deep dive into everything people can expect from psilocybin therapy, and how to best work with the medicine. This covers topics such as working with psychological discomfort, remaining connected to the body, navigating the stages of a typical psilocybin experience, managing nausea, surrendering, and much more.
• Making the final decision on optimal dosing recommendations and suggestions after careful consideration of all the factors that go into determining the optimal therapeutic dose of psilocybin.
• Adopting a “roaming” approach during the dosing sessions, where they move between each guest and check their individual support needs. This allows the retreat leader to be flexible in working with guests who need the most hands-on, direct care and attention throughout the group’s session. In these cases, the retreat leader works alongside the facilitators responsible for these particular guests. Since psilocybin therapy sessions are largely an internal experience, hands-on care isn’t always needed. MycoMeditations' roaming approach with the retreat leaders ensures the therapy team’s support system adapts to the unique needs of each psilocybin session.
• Providing additional therapeutic support during the integration sessions, where guests process what they experienced in the prior day’s dose. (The lead therapist leads the support during MycoMeditations integration sessions.)
• Coordinating with hospitality staff regarding the unique needs of each guest during the retreat week – those related to accommodation, meals, amenities, activities, and comfort.
• Supporting guests during downtime, such as meals, where more casual integration work happens through lighter conversations.
• Arranging private discussions throughout the week, as guests continue to integrate their experiences.
• Being on call during the evenings and nights, should a guest need additional support.

Lead Therapist: Leading Integration Sessions and Therapeutic Processing

For each retreat, the MycoMeditations therapy team includes a lead therapist, who will always be a senior licensed therapist. Like the retreat leader, they also gain significant retreat experience prior to earning this position (15+ retreats worked, with 150 guests cared for and 450 psilocybin therapy sessions administered).

The responsibilities of the lead therapist include:

• Leading the three integration sessions after the three psilocybin therapy sessions. In these integration sessions, which last approximately 4 hours, the lead therapist works with one guest at a time, helping them see deeper, more meaningful layers of their session through discussion of important aspects of their psilocybin experience. They help guests gain clearer insights into the experience, process the emotions that arose, and develop healthy meaning and takeaways to bring back home. Given the short timeframe of the retreat, MycoMeditations lead therapists often use a more directed approach to get at the heart of what’s coming up for the guest. This may mean disrupting or challenging a guest’s habitual patterns and beliefs as revealed in the group, or slowing people down to connect with the group's presence and nurture a vulnerable part. This process at MycoMeditations is always conducted with a sensitive, trauma-informed perspective, ensuring that any discomfort is well tolerated and managed. The flexibility of the lead therapist’s approach is needed to meet the specific therapeutic needs of each guest.
• Working closely with the retreat leader to discuss optimal dosing suggestions for each guest based on everything observed about their experience throughout the retreat.
• Adopting a roaming role during dosing sessions in scenarios where it’s better for the retreat leader to be exclusively based with a particular guest. The lead therapist then becomes the senior team member who moves throughout the dosing space, providing additional direct care wherever necessary.
• Coordinating with hospitality staff regarding the unique needs of each guest during the retreat week – those related to accommodation, meals, amenities, activities, and comfort.
• Remaining open for further psychological support during downtime, such as during breakfast, lunch, or dinner discussions.
• Arranging private discussions throughout the week, as guests continue to integrate their experiences.

Facilitators: Providing Personalized Support During Psilocybin Sessions

The MycoMeditations team at each retreat includes anywhere from 3 to 5 facilitators, depending on the size of the group. Facilitators on the MycoMeditations therapy team are either therapists themselves or experienced psychedelic facilitators with a different professional background than licensed therapy. All facilitators have completed MycoMeditations’ Facilitator-In-Training, a 6-retreat training process in which facilitators gain experience working with dozens of guests and witnessing hundreds of psilocybin sessions.

The responsibilities of a facilitator on the MycoMeditations therapy team involve:

• Providing guidance and support to the guest they are working with during the psilocybin dosing sessions.
• At times, supervising two guests (at most) during dosing sessions. As mentioned, since psilocybin therapy is mostly internal, direct, one-on-one facilitation isn’t always necessary. The facilitator can watch over two guests and work with one directly as support becomes needed. When both guests need guidance, the roaming retreat leader or lead therapist steps in.
• Setting up and cleaning the dosing space before and after sessions.
• Offering support and insights to guests all throughout the week.
• Providing context to the retreat leader and lead therapist about each guest’s psilocybin experiences, or from any other moments throughout the week.
• Depending on how responsibilities are split among the facilitators, they may record notes on everything discussed during preparation and integration sessions to be logged into the guest’s health record following the retreat, or lead the guests through meditations in the minutes before each psilocybin session.
• Remaining open for further integration discussion during mealtimes.
• Being present in integration sessions, but not leading them (as noted above, this is the responsibility of the retreat leader and lead therapist). Integration at MycoMeditations, while taking place in a group setting, is not like traditional group therapy, where everyone is active. This is done to keep the therapeutic approach for each guest focused, aligned, and intentional between the lead therapist and retreat leader.
• Arranging private discussions throughout the week, as guests continue to integrate their experiences.

Nurse: Supporting Guest Health and Safety Throughout the Retreat

Each retreat includes one nurse, who is present each day, just like the rest of the MycoMeditations team.

Since our two nurses have been part of the MycoMeditations team for years now, they have also been trained as facilitators. So, beyond nursing duties, where they attend to the physical and general health needs of guests, they work in the same capacity as facilitators on dosing days, and they are also present on integration days.

Facilitators-in-Training: Learning the MycoMeditations Guest Support Model

Every member of the MycoMeditations therapy team has completed the Facilitator-in-Training program. Some retreats may include 1–3 spots for staff that’s in training. These are therapists or facilitators who are new to the MycoMeditations therapy team, and they mostly serve an observational capacity during their training, including on retreat.

They don’t often provide hands-on psychedelic facilitation support to guests during dosing sessions. Instead, they shadow other therapy team members and observe how the rest of the MycoMeditations team works together to support guests during sessions and throughout the week.

That said, team members within Facilitator-In-Training are always encouraged to engage with guests therapeutically throughout the week. During downtime, facilitators in training work with guests to further assist in their integration process.

They are also present at integration sessions, but they don’t take an active role in guiding them; again, their role is primarily observational.

On-Call Psychiatrist and Doctor: Medical and Psychiatric Backup During Retreats

For every retreat, the MycoMeditations therapy team includes a psychiatrist and a doctor who are on call 24/7, should any psychiatric or medical emergencies take place.

What Experience and Training Does the MycoMeditations Therapy Team Have?

The MycoMeditations therapy team includes licensed mental health professionals, trained facilitators, and on-call medical personnel. Rather than relying solely on theoretical training and knowledge, the team has years of hands-on experience facilitating altered states of consciousness through psilocybin. This includes specialization in trauma-informed care and the ability to provide extensive preparation and post-session integration support.

The MycoMeditations therapy team’s background and expertise include, but are not limited to:

• Credentials in psychology, psychotherapy, social work, and counseling, as well as certifications from facilitator training institutions such as the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).
• The integration of a variety of psychological frameworks, including Internal Family Systems (IFS), somatic therapy, relational therapies, such as Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), transpersonal psychology, mindfulness approaches, hypnotherapy, and depth psychology.
• Experience as some of the first therapists providing legal psilocybin therapy sessions, having hosted over 2500 guests and administering more than 7500 psilocybin therapy sessions as a team.
• Knowledge and hands-on experience on how to help guests process intense emotions and trauma, as well as implement profound insights into daily living.
• Trauma-informed care at all levels of facilitation.

The knowledge and facilitation experience of the MycoMeditations therapy team allows them to work with each guest to find a wise balance between active intervention and simply allowing the healing process to naturally unfold.

How the MycoMeditations Therapy Team Supports Guests Before the Retreat

Before arriving in Jamaica, the MycoMeditations guest intake manager conducts a thorough psychological and medical screening. This is to ensure that a guest doesn’t present any psilocybin contraindications. These are psychiatric or medical conditions or medications that increase the risks of psilocybin, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, or medications like lithium, MAOIs, and stimulants.

Following the screening process and upon registration, guests have a one-on-one preparation call with the guest intake manager to outline intentions, discuss mindset, and manage expectations. Both the screening process and in-depth therapeutic discussion before the retreat help to assess the personal readiness of each guest, which is crucial for establishing their specific support needs.

The MycoMeditations team also provides guests a wide range of support material, such as a Family & Friends Support Book, guided meditations and exercises, recommended reading, and a document with music suggestions for the psilocybin sessions, so guests can listen beforehand and get a sense of which recommended album or playlist for psilocybin therapy feels best for them.

The hospitality team, led by Director of Operations Abbie Townsend, is always on hand to assist with every detail to create the smoothest arrival possible. Through Abbie, additional support calls are arranged whenever necessary.

This pre-retreat phase helps ensure each guest is medically safe and psychologically ready to step into our immersive retreat experience and process the material that arises during their psilocybin sessions.

We intentionally don’t include pre-retreat meetings for our retreats. In our experience, it is best for people to arrive and come together without any preconceived ideas about anyone, whether other guests or staff, formed through a limited online experience. The best introductions and connections are formed organically from the ground up on the first evening of the retreat.

During the Retreat: Guest Care, Dosing Support, and Personalized Guidance

Before the first dosing session, the MycoMeditations therapy team conducts an in-depth introduction session. This session, taking place over 4-5 hours, is where guests share about their lives and personal challenges with the retreat leader and lead therapist. The introduction sessions, while done in a group setting, involve each guest working with the MycoMeditations therapy team one at a time.

The introduction session also involves a lengthy discussion called “flight instructions” on how to navigate any challenging or uncomfortable effects of psilocybin.

During psilocybin sessions, members of the MycoMeditations therapy team are positioned near each guest to monitor, guide, and help guests navigate any psychological, physical, or spiritual experiences during the session.

The first session uses a gentler dose to see what begins to emerge and how guests respond, making it easier to calibrate subsequent doses. This dosing strategy ensures guests don’t dose too high or too low, which can lead to distressing or underwhelming experiences, respectively.

Before the second dosing session, another preparation session takes place. During this, the team continues to check in with guests to see how insights or strong emotions that arose from the first session may be unfolding, or whether any new emotional processing has arisen. This preparation session enables guests to express how they feel about their next experience, as well as what their intentions are for it, often in light of what was revealed in their first journey.

An increase in dosage is generally recommended for the second session, as this is when deeper psychological processing tends to occur, and therapeutic effects tend to heighten.

The third dose follows a similar cadence as the second one, where the morning begins with a preparation session to check in before the final session. Depending on where each guest is at this stage of the retreat, most guests still opt for higher doses in this session. Others repeat the same dose as the second or take a lower one to consolidate previous sessions.

Ultimately, the MycoMeditations therapy team only offers dosing suggestions. It is completely up to the guest to take whatever they are comfortable with. The therapy team ensures the guest is informed about their reasoning behind any suggestions offered, but it is always the guest’s choice in the end. However, the retreat leader will set a limit on the dose we are willing to provide to each guest, based on what we think their safe and effective threshold is, given all we know about them.

A Team-to-Guest Ratio That Allows for Personalized Support

The MycoMeditations therapy team maintains a facilitator-to-guest ratio of at least 1:1.5 to ensure each guest receives adequate, personalized support. No guest is left unattended, and whenever a participant requires help or psychological support, a facilitator is always ready to work with them.

Personalized support ensures each guest feels safe, grounded, comfortable, hydrated, and equipped to handle any intense or highly personal psychological material that arises during sessions.

Other psychedelic retreats have lower facilitator-to-guest ratios than MycoMeditations, often more like 1:3 or 1:4. Some psychedelic retreats may even have up to 20 guests with only four facilitators, or a facilitator-to-guest ratio of 1:5.

The fewer facilitators there are, the greater the risk is that a guest won’t get the level of support and attention they need, when they need it most. A typical MycoMeditations retreat may have 10 guests with seven team members, consisting of the roles outlined above. This far exceeds what is standard amongst psychedelic retreats.

How Small Group Psilocybin Retreats Help Guests Receive More Individual Attention

It’s worth emphasizing that MycoMeditations opts for small group sizes, relative to other psilocybin retreats. Retreats are limited to 8–10 guests, allowing us to provide each person with the most individualized and extensive therapeutic attention.

Most psychedelic retreats have all the participants dosing together in the same room. Given our intimate group sizes and high facilitator-to-guest ratio, the MycoMeditations therapy team allows guests to spread out across the retreat property. This means each guest has private psilocybin therapy sessions with a dedicated guide.

In addition to offering more personalized support during dosing sessions, small group retreats ensure that guests have a more bespoke and in-depth therapeutic experience in all facets of the retreat surrounding the psilocybin sessions.

A small group size means that no guest will leave feeling restricted by time constraints or limited bandwidth, which can happen with larger retreats. During integration sessions, each guest gets the time to completely dive with our therapy team to discuss the most salient aspects of their experience, what it means to them, what they took from it, what was confusing or challenging about their journey, and how they’d like to use this experience to improve themselves and their lives.

Small group retreats are crucial for achieving the level of healing and growth guests are aiming for. The MycoMeditations therapy team considers their retreat an intensive psychedelic therapy immersion. We aim to achieve in seven days what the typical therapeutic relationship takes months to do, namely, understanding, confronting, and healing the roots of long-term emotional distress.

Owing to our intensive approach, we jump straight into the heart of the healing process: this means encouraging emotional openness in the preparation and integration phases, and deep psychological processing during the dosing sessions. All of this, however, depends on guests feeling they have sufficient time, space, and support, which is what small group sizes provide.

How the MycoMeditations Therapy Team Supports Integration After the Retreat

The lead therapist is in charge of the three integration sessions held after the retreat ends. This is where guests explore everything that has unfolded since their return home, or work through any challenges in the integration process. Here’s what the three post-retreat integration sessions involve:

• 2–3 weeks post retreat: adjusting to life back home and working with momentum.
• 4–5 weeks post-retreat: examining changes and adjustments towards old patterns.
• 6–8 weeks post-retreat: solidifying a new mindset and lifestyle for moving forward.

As we can see, support for guests continues long after the retreat is over. The MycoMeditations team recognizes the opportunities created by the “critical period”, where the brain remains in a state of enhanced neuroplasticity in the weeks following a psilocybin session. This makes people more open to learning from their environment and, in turn, more amenable to therapeutic support. Gül Dölen, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has said:

“The open state of the critical period may be an opportunity for a post-treatment integration period to maintain the learning state. Too often, after having a procedure or treatment, people go back to their chaotic, busy lives that can be overwhelming. Clinicians may want to consider the time period after a psychedelic drug dose as a time to heal and learn, much like we do for open heart surgery.”

The MycoMeditations therapy team helps guests make the most of the critical period, ensuring that healthier mental and lifestyle habits are established and solidified.

The group chat from the retreat also remains open, where guests continue connecting with those they went through the retreat with. Guests are always invited to join regional communities of MycoMeditations alumni, where in-person meetups are a regular occurrence.

Guests are always encouraged to reach out to the MycoMeditations therapy team should they have any questions or difficulties that require more personalized care post-retreat.

Why the MycoMeditations Therapy Team Matters to the Retreat Experience

A key aspect of psilocybin therapy is the psychological support involved. Certain psychedelic retreats aren’t set up to truly work with psychedelics in deeper therapeutic capacities; however, this is what MycoMeditations is known for and optimized around.

The MycoMeditations therapy team understands the importance of the therapeutic alliance, integration, and aftercare in the process of psychological change. We prioritize personalized care and the highest standards of guest support through our innovative approach by creating total therapeutic psychedelic immersions. This is essential for getting the most out of these types of retreat experiences, including long after that profound week comes to a close.