Getting Intentional with your Medicine Journey: Set your Energetic Commitment

Embarking on a medicine journey can be such a profound and transformative experience. But with most experiences, we get out of it what we invest into it. The real medicine isn't in the substances we ingest, but in the choices we make to listen to, honor, and align with our inner-healer and wisdom. So in this blog, we explore ways we can best show up to our upcoming psychedelic experiences through our intentions, or what I like to call our energetic commitment.

Many people set specific intentions before taking entheogens, like "I'd like to heal my relationship with my brother," or "I intend to meet my spirit animal," or "my goal is to explore my spiritual gifts." While this type of focused intention setting can be valuable and even effective, in my experience, our systems have an inherent intelligence and order of operations that may or may not line up with our specific intention. For example, before healing your relationship with your brother, your system might need to address your relationship with yourself first (or whatever the case). So in your medicine journey, literally nothing related to your brother might come up. It can be frustrating to set an expectation or intention and not have it addressed.

As such, over the years, instead of having people set an intention I've found it helpful to determine our personal energetic commitment for a medicine journey. This commitment directs our focus, energy, and awareness toward what we can do to show up for the insight and growth that may come from our medicine journey. Just as a gardener tends to the soil to ensure the health of the plants, setting our energetic commitment is akin to cultivating fertile ground in our lives, creating the optimal conditions for growth, healing, and transformation.

Some questions that might help you conceptualize and determine your energetic commitment might be:

• What can I start doing today to begin welcoming the insights that might come during a medicine journey?

• How can I flex the muscle of listening, staying open to, and being curious about my patterns, my defense mechanisms, what my body is communicating, what the universe is asking of me, etc.

• What space am I creating to reflect on, incorporate, and honor the insights that may come during my journey? Space may include a physical place like an altar, or a 10-minute practice of meditation or journaling each morning, or whatever works best for you.

• Is there something I might address or implement today that might allow for me to have a more meaningful outcome with the sacred medicine journey I'm about to embark on? (Like doing a fast or making dietary changes, or abstaining from social media or alcohol, etc.)