Cannabis Assisted Therapy in Boulder and Denver
Helping People Use Cannabis Therapeutically to Navigate Life with Courage, Resilience, and Equanimity.
What is the Innate Healing and Integrative Therapy Center of Boulder Cannabis Assisted Psychedelic Therapy Program?
Cannabis-assisted psychedelic therapy is for people who are wanting to take the next step when it comes to growth, healing, and spiritual exploration. You’re no newbie when it comes to self-help and self-care. You understand what you need to do to feel healthy, and you like to take a holistic approach to your wellbeing. And yet . . . something is missing. It may feel like therapy is only sometimes effective, or that you have plateaued.
You want to grow, to bloom, to go deeper, but you just aren’t sure how. Cannabis-assisted psychedelic therapy may be exactly what you are looking for. Combined with clinical interventions, cannabis is a beautiful tool that allows you to access the root of your issues and speed up your therapeutic journey. You may have smoked cannabis recreationally and had moments of clarity, depth, or insight. Or, you’ve smoked cannabis and experienced difficult and unpleasant experiences.
Unfortunately, confining cannabis to recreational use means that you are missing out on medicine with incredibly promising therapeutic potential. By using cannabis during therapy, you can move past the basic and conscious benefits of talk therapy and access something different: the innate healing potential of your autonomic nervous system. Cannabis-assisted psychedelic therapy is a legal, safe, and therapeutic experience available in Boulder and Denver for women who are seeking extra assistance on their healing journeys.
“Innate: The Power That Resides Within”
How Does Cannabis Assisted Psychedelic Therapy Work?
Cannabis Assisted Therapy is a type of psychedelic-assisted therapy. By using cannabis in a therapeutic setting with a trained expert, cannabis can help you process different memories and emotions on a somatic level. Trauma is released from deep within your body, and your brain is able to form new memories and pathways around difficult or traumatizing lived experiences. You’ve likely heard of fight or flight. This is an instinctual reaction to perceived danger or stress, and it’s triggered by your sympathetic nervous system.
When you experience trauma or stress, your body will bury the trauma deep within your sympathetic nervous system. Until you process this trauma and form new memories and connections around your stored trauma, your sympathetic nervous system will be triggered in response to anything that may remind you of this trauma. Your body will have a physical reaction to the perceived threat— shakiness, racing heart, sensations of panic, a swell of emotion.
Cannabis-assisted therapy helps you activate the innate healing potential of your parasympathetic nervous system. Your parasympathetic slows the stress response by releasing hormones that can help you reprocess the memories that you have stored, but with different associations. Your mind is ready to do the work of healing for you: you just need the right setting and guide.
Benefits of the Innate Healing and Integrative Therapy Center of Boulder Cannabis Assisted Psychedelic Therapy Program:
Cannabis Assisted Psychedelic Therapy Has the Potential To:
Shift your body into the healing parasympathetic nervous system mode
Access stored memories, leading to the remapping or resolution of troubling or traumatic memories
Deepen your awareness of the root of emotions that you may frequently experience
Increase your sense of agency around life situations, both past, and present
The Innate Healing and Integrative Therapy Center of Boulder Cannabis Assisted Therapy Treatment Process:
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Free Consultation:
I believe that there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to the work I do. I approach life with a spirit of curiosity that carries over to my practice. I want to get time to talk with you, to hear what you have experienced, and to really listen to what you are saying.
My free consultation with you will take about an hour. This gives me time to get to know you and to see if Cannabis Assisted Therapy is a good fit for you. From there, I tailor your treatment to fit your needs. We will discuss a personalized treatment plan, including what interventions I recommend and what I think your time commitment will look like.
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Pre-Sessions:
Unlike recreational use, our time together is focused on ceremony, ritual, and setting. Our pre-session is a time for us to build a relationship of trust, connection, and vulnerability so I can best guide you during your cannabis-assisted therapy sessions. I will also work with you to take the steps towards holding space in your life for non-duality. When we have a new framework for viewing life— accepting all circumstances with a calm and courageous spirit— the outside tools that we use are all the more powerful.
We will discuss symptoms, but we will also set an intention— this is our time to discuss any traumas or emotions that you hope to process during our protocols. I will also use this time to discuss what your experience with cannabis will be like, including what to expect, how to prepare, and what type of strain I best recommend based on your desired outcome.
I typically recommend 4-6 pre-session before we begin our cannabis-assisted therapy protocols. We can determine what your length of treatment will look like during our free consultation.
Investment: $150/ session
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Cannabis Assisted Psychedelic Therapy Protocols:
During our cannabis-assisted therapy sessions, we will focus on using the innate biological abilities of your parasympathetic nervous system to process and heal the trauma that is stored in your sympathetic nervous system.
While you might experience the typical physical sensations that you associate with nervousness or discomfort, your mind is hard at work shifting memories and reprocessing them in this new, safe context.
We can process verbally together, or you can ‘tune out’ and focus on your experience. Whichever you choose, the medicine does the unconscious work for you by creating new neurological pathways and memories from this place of security.
After your experience is over, we begin an integration process. This is the post-plant medicine work that we do together to help you integrate messages, ideas, and interpretations from your experience into your life.
These sessions typically last for four hours. I typically recommend 3 protocols of cannabis-assisted therapy. We will determine what your length of treatment will look like during our free consultation.
Investment: $450/ session.
Advanced Training, Experience & Associations
Prati Training (Psychedelic Research and Training Institute) - Ketamine Therapy
Medicinal Mindfulness Training for Cannabis and Ketamine
Somatic Psychotherapy
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Mindfulness Coaching
MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and Buddhist Psychology from Naropa University
BA in Psychology and Humanities minoring in Philosophy from University of Colorado, Boulder
Psy.D Candidate in Doctorate of Psychology from Calsouthern University
Cannabis Assisted Therapy FAQ’s
Who is eligible to participate in the Innate Healing and Integrative Therapy Center of Boulder’s Cannabis Assisted Psychedelic Therapy program?
Cannabis-assisted psychedelic therapy is available to individuals 21 and older. You must have an unexpired, valid ID to purchase your cannabis pen.
I work with people who are ready for growth and change. I have the most success with clients who are ready and willing to take agency of their life and goals. My clients already are practicing self-care and self-exploration in many areas of their lives, and are ready for a little plant power to take them to the next level.
Unfortunately, cannabis-assisted therapy does not show the same efficacy for people who have bipolar disorder, personality disorders, or schizoaffective disorders.
What is the difference between recreational cannabis use and therapeutic cannabis use? Is it worth the investment?
With the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, cannabis is readily available to any consumer. While cannabis has benefits recreationally, the therapeutic experience of using cannabis with a trained guide is a night and day difference.
Innate Healing and Integrative Therapy Center of Boulder’s Cannabis Assisted Psychedelic Therapy program shifts cannabis from being a recreational tool to being a deeply intuitive, therapeutically supportive experience. Even clients who frequently use cannabis recreationally are surprised at what it can accomplish in therapy with a trained provider!
Do you provide the marijuana for me?
While I will give you tailored recommendations for the strain of cannabis, you are responsible for bringing the cannabis pen to our sessions.
Please note: Screening for cannabis abuse will be evaluated prior to treatment. Unsafe use of cannabis is not condoned by the Innate Healing and Integrative Therapy Center of Boulder. All treatment is done in a controlled and clinical setting.
Will my insurance cover my treatment?
I am an out-of-network provider and therefore I do not work directly with any insurance plans.
This can be a benefit to you when it comes to treating mental-health-related symptoms. Any insurance claim requires a medical diagnosis to authorize treatment, even if a medical diagnosis does not exist in your situation.
Even worse, the insurance company determines how many counseling sessions are appropriate for your treatment, regardless of where you are in the healing process.
By working out of insurance, we are able to work together regardless of any medical diagnosis (or lack thereof). We can choose how frequently we want to meet, and we do not have to terminate treatment on the whim of a third party (your insurance provider).