Healing Power of Entheogen Plant Medicine

TRAVEL LIVE PLAY | FIONA HARPER

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Guided by ancient wisdom and modern science, Behold Retreats has launched entheogen plant medicine services, with a focus on wellbeing and peak performance for retreat guests. With enchanting retreats located in exotic locations like Costa Rica, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, programs facilitate life-changing plant medicine journeys to help you explore your inner world, discover your truth enabling guests to embrace life to its fullest potential. These idyllic destinations are positioned where plant medicine such as ayahuasca, psilocybin, or the san Pedro cactus are legal.

Behold Retreats create bespoke individualised and holistic programs. Each includes education, preparation, retreat, and post-integration support with a qualified coach or therapist. In selecting this approach, guests realise the full potential of their experience, and on returning home are supported to make sustained improvements to the quality of their everyday life.

Plant medicine facilitators guide guests into a meditative and expanded state of consciousness, ensuring safety and comfort throughout the experience. In this immersive and highly supported context, guests are granted unparalleled access to their subconscious mind- allowing them to navigate within and to receive salient, memorable insights.

Access to effective treatments that improve mental wellbeing has never been more important. According to estimates, roughly one in six individuals, over 1 billion people, were suffering from mental health challenges before COVID-19. As the pandemic impacts our health, the economy, and freedom of movement and human interaction around the world, many of us need additional support.  

The scientific evidence for the safety and benefits of plant medicine is compelling. Over the past two decades, John Hopkins School of Medicine, as well as other leading universities, have performed a significant amount of research on psilocybin. In one such John Hopkins study in 2013, healthy adults were given psilocybin to promote long-lasting psychological growth. Fourteen months after participating in the study, 94% said the experience was amongst the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives while 39% said it was “the single most meaningful experience”.

Interestingly, the participants themselves were not the only ones who saw benefit: their friends, family members and colleagues also reported that the psilocybin experience had made the participants calmer, happier and kinder.

Under these therapeutic conditions, research has also shown plant medicine to be highly effective in treatment of common challenges such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, and a range of addictions. A primary factor in these results is that plant medicine promotes neurogenesis: new neurons form and new neural connections are made, enabling communication and reconciliation between parts of the brain that normally do not exchange information. It is believed that these effects facilitate neurological healing and reset at the root cause, which explains the sustained benefits.

Plant medicine is quickly entering the mainstream, bolstered by the science, heartfelt stories of transformation, forward-thinking investors like Peter Thiel and Tim Ferriss, and successful legalisation and decriminalisation campaigns in Europe and North America. In a recent Goop Lab episode on Netflix, Gwyneth Paltrow’s team goes to Jamaica for a psilocybin retreat. One team member summarised the experience as “five years of therapy”, another as “a turning point in her life”.

Will Siu, MD, DPhil, Oxford- and Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Goop Lab consultant tells Behold Retreats: "Research studies into entheogen plant medicine over the past two decades are leading to a revolution in psychiatric treatment. Results from these studies at the top U.S. academic research universities are demonstrating rates of sustained healing for mental health disorders never before seen in psychiatry."

Jonathan de Potter, founder of Behold Retreats continues: “We are pleased to introduce this natural evolution in wellbeing and performance in these challenging times. At Behold Retreats, we encourage people to do their own research on plant medicine, to ask themselves whether they may benefit, and to look within and be guided by professionals to make their own educated decision. For those who are ready to open the door to this inner exploration, Behold Retreats are here to start the conversation”.

Jonathan concludes:  “Through its network, Behold Retreats is building communities of interest, and to connect with academia, partners, policymakers, psychiatrists, and therapists to begin conversations on if and how to introduce this important science in culturally appropriate ways.”

More information: Behold Retreats