Shamanic Healing vs Reiki vs Psychedelic Integration: How to Choose

People ask me this more than almost anything else: which one do I actually need? Shamanic healing, Reiki, psychedelic integration — three different doors, and most people who reach out have no idea which one they’re standing in front of. Fair enough. They sound similar from the outside. They’re not the same thing at all. Let me walk you through how I actually think about it.

The short version, if you’re in a hurry

• Shamanic healing is the ceremonial one — entity clearing, soul retrieval, working with what feels stuck or weighed down. It draws on my training as a Tabaquero in Peru.
• Reiki and energy healing is the gentle one — fatigue, stress, pain, nervous-system support. Available in person or by distance, anywhere in the world.
• Psychedelic integration is the talking one — preparing for, or making sense of, a psychedelic experience you’re having (or already had) somewhere else. No substances in the room, ever.

If that’s enough to point you the right way, good. If it isn’t, keep reading — or just get in touch and we’ll sort it out over the phone instead of a page.

Shamanic healing

This is the one closest to what I actually trained for in Peru. A session runs around two hours at La Tierra Curativa, and it moves — chanting and icaros (the medicine songs), drumming, smoke-clearing, rapéh, chakapa work with the leaf rattle, Reiki woven through it, a drum journey to close things out. We talk before we start and we talk after. Nothing gets left hanging in the air.

Who ends up here? People carrying grief that hasn’t shifted with time. People who feel stuck — blocked, weighed down, disconnected from themselves or something bigger than themselves — even when they can’t quite name why. Some come for soul-retrieval work specifically, for a part of them that split off under trauma years ago. Others just feel pulled toward it and can’t explain the pull. That’s fine too.

What it isn’t: a substance ceremony (that’s the separate Mapacho tobacco ceremony), and it isn’t a lie-back-and-relax session the way Reiki can be. It’s active. You’ll work.

Read the full shamanic healing service page →

Reiki and energy healing

Reiki’s the lighter touch. I trained across a few lineages — Reiki, Ashati, Seichem, Golden Dragon — and a session is a consultation, energy channelled through the chakra system, then a debrief to close. About an hour. You can do it in person on the Central Coast, or by distance over Zoom or phone from wherever you are (yes, distance healing genuinely works — I know how that sounds).

This is where people land for fatigue, stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia, muscular pain, headaches, recovering soft tissue, general immune and nervous-system support. It’s the entry point for people who want something gentler than ceremony, and it’s the only one of the three you can do without ever leaving your house.

What’s missing from it: the shamanic elements — icaros, chakapa, smoke-clearing — those live in the shamanic healing session, not here. If the ceremonial, Peru-trained side is what’s calling you, Reiki on its own is a lighter offering than that.

Read the full Reiki & energy healing service page →

Psychedelic integration

This one confuses people the most, so let me be blunt about it: nothing is administered here. No substances, no dosing conversation. It’s a structured conversation — 1.5 hours, in person at La Tierra Curativa or over Zoom or phone — for people getting ready for a legal clinic, trial or retreat, or trying to make sense of something they’ve already been through, sometimes years ago, sometimes last month, sometimes a difficult one they haven’t told anyone about.

It sits alongside whatever clinical care you’ve already got — your psychologist, your psychiatrist, your prescribing clinician — never instead of it. Think of it less as treatment and more as somewhere to actually process what came up, properly, with someone who’s not going to flinch at the content.

It’s not ceremony (again — Mapacho tobacco ceremony, separate thing entirely), and it’s not clinical psychedelic-assisted therapy either. I’m not in the room administering anything. I’m the person you talk to before and after.

Read the full guide → Psychedelic Integration: A Practical Guide Read the full service page →

On cost and time — because it’s a real part of the decision

Reiki’s the lightest commitment, about an hour, distance healing available if getting to me isn’t practical. Shamanic healing runs around two hours and tends to be part of an ongoing process rather than a one-off — especially where soul retrieval’s involved, that work rarely finishes in a single sitting. Psychedelic integration runs 1.5 hours and is built as a preparation-and-integration process, not a fix in one visit — some people need one session, some want an ongoing thread of them. None of this should be the whole decision. But you should know it before you call.

How they actually relate to each other

Here’s the thing nobody tells you upfront: these aren’t three competing options sitting in a menu. Reiki is already woven through a shamanic healing session — I don’t do one without the other showing up somewhere. Psychedelic integration sits alongside either, because the material that surfaces after a psychedelic experience often needs exactly the same kind of energetic and shamanic support that shows up in my other work anyway. Most people who stick around end up using more than one over time. They start with whatever feels most urgent, and the rest tends to reveal itself.

So which one, then?

Honestly? If you’re carrying something heavy and want an active process to work through it — start with shamanic healing. If what you need is gentler — stress, fatigue, general wellbeing, maybe from a distance — Reiki is your door. If a psychedelic experience specifically is what you’re preparing for or unpacking — that’s psychedelic integration. If you actually want to take part in ceremony itself, none of the above — you want what to expect at a Mapacho tobacco ceremony.

And if none of that landed? Completely normal. Most people can’t self-diagnose this from a webpage — I couldn’t either, in your shoes. Get in touch and we’ll work it out together.

Where I actually am

Home base is La Tierra Curativa, Central Coast NSW. I tour regularly to Sydney and Gold Coast for shamanic healing and ceremony work, with ceremony integration support in Sydney and Gold Coast as well. Reiki distance healing and psychedelic integration by Zoom or phone — those two you can do from anywhere.

Still not sure

That’s fair enough — most people aren’t, and a page can only do so much. Get in touch, tell me what you’re actually carrying, and we’ll figure out the right door together.