Psychedelic Integration & Practitioner Training

A gap in Australia's emerging landscape

Australia's approach to psychedelic-assisted therapy has been shifting. Since mid-2023, the Therapeutic Goods Administration has allowed specifically authorised psychiatrists to prescribe MDMA and psilocybin for certain treatment-resistant conditions in tightly controlled settings. That's a narrow, closely regulated medical pathway — but it has opened a much wider public conversation about psychedelic and plant-medicine work, and with it, growing demand for practitioners who can genuinely support the integration and preparation side of that work, not just the clinical dosing session itself.

Right now, training that speaks directly to that integration-and-preparation skill set — as distinct from medical prescribing on one side and unregulated ceremony facilitation on the other — is thin on the ground in Australia. That's the space this training sits in: not a claim about what the law allows any individual practitioner to do, but a practitioner-development offering for the skill of holding people well before and after this kind of work, whatever setting they encounter it in.

What the training covers

The training draws on two things most programs treat separately: clinically grounded therapeutic skill, and lived, ceremony-trained experience. Andrew brings both — a PACFA-registered counselling and Processwork Psychotherapy background, a Mind Medicine Australia Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies (CPAT), and hands-on ceremonial experience as a Peru-trained Tabaquero working with plant medicine since 2018. Cohorts work through how to prepare a client well before an experience — setting intention, building safety, understanding what may arise — and how to hold the integration work afterwards, so insight has a real chance of becoming lasting change rather than fading within weeks.

This is deliberately not training in how to run a ceremony or administer any substance. It's aimed at strengthening the therapeutic container practitioners already bring to their own clients — the preparation and integration skill that sits either side of the experience itself, regardless of the setting in which that experience takes place.

Who it's for

This is a practitioner-development offering, not an entry point for people without a relevant background. It suits counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches, nurses and other allied-health practitioners who already hold — or are actively working toward — a relevant qualification and want to build genuine competence in this specific area, whether they're already fielding integration questions from clients or anticipating that they will be soon.

How it's delivered

Andrew runs small in-person cohorts at La Tierra Curativa, his permaculture property on the Central Coast NSW, combining structured teaching with the same grounded, unhurried pace that shapes his one-to-one work. For practitioners further afield, the training is also available online — reach out and he'll talk through which format, and which upcoming cohort, would suit you.

Where this connects to the rest of the practice

This training grows out of the same work Andrew already does one-to-one: psychedelic integration and preparation support, holistic counselling and psychotherapy, and cannabis-assisted somatic psychotherapy. If you're weighing up whether you need training as a practitioner or support as a client, get in touch — the first conversation is about finding the right fit, not selling you into the wrong one.