Creating a Safe Psychedelic Container: Ritual, Transformation, and Relationship
By Justin Levy
How do we create structures and containers for psychedelic experiences? Without structures, ceremonies can easily descend into chaos. Many modern trainings teach that safety is an important part of structure, but I've never heard "safety" talked about in any of my shamanic experiences.
Instead of basing a ceremony on safety, I think ritual containers should be based on the following.
Individual transformation happens within a wider circle of relationships.
Transformation as Ritualized Death and Rebirth
I want to explore this piece by piece. First, when I say transformation, I mean ritualized death and rebirth. A part of us has to die so that a new being can be born. Look at the devotion and reverence the Tantrik goddess Kali engenders. She wears a necklace of human heads, symbolizing how she ritually destroys us. I believe that for many of us modern people, within the desire for psychedelics lies a deep human desire for ritualized death.
Much of our modern fascination with psychedelics is a hunger for this kind of initiation. We yearn for our old self to die, to break free from the chains of our past, and to be reborn. Across many cultures, rituals and ceremonies have provided a framework for this process, experientially teaching about the cyclical nature of life, death, and rebirth.
In modern society, this sacred cycle has no place. Initiatory rites have dwindled to hollow imitations—bar mitzvahs, baptisms, and other ceremonies that no longer fully embody the transformative power they once held. Our sanitized relationship with death, hidden away in hospital rooms and dulled by morphine drips, has left us craving something real. But with this aversion to death comes an outsized emphasis on safety.
Modern psychedelic facilitation often mirrors this avoidance. Facilitators are trained to guide others by studying techniques and protocols rather than directly engaging with their own initiatory processes. But when a participant experiences a ritual dismemberment by the dark goddess in a psychedelic journey, is a theoretical framework enough to guide them?
Beyond Safety: Why Relationship is the True Psychedelic Container
I once attended a workshop led by a Lakota medicine woman named Dancing Crow, which was marketed as "How to Create a Psychedelic Container." Many participants came armed with notebooks, ready to capture a step-by-step guide to crafting the perfect ceremony. Instead, she shared stories—about meeting her spirits, nurturing relationships with them, and how those relationships helped her clients. Whenever people would try to guide her back to answering the question-- "how do I create a container?” she'd tell another story! I saw a lot of empty notebooks that day.
Her teaching was clear: the foundation of a psychedelic container is not safety but relationship.
A Wider Circle of Relationships: Psychedelics and the Web of Interconnection
Modern culture hyper-fixates on the individual—“my story,” “my trauma,” “my healing.” But one thing that becomes very apparent in a psychedelic journey is that our own trauma is a part of the vast web of nature. Our connections to our families, ancestors, plant beings, animal totems, and other spirits form much of the context of our journeys. Old traditions teach us that humans are but one part of a deep web of interconnectedness. By deepening our relationships in those worlds we learn directly about the cycles of feeding and being fed, of giving and taking, of dying and being reborn.
Having Deep Relationship as the Ceremonial Structure
Facilitator and Participant: the bonds between a facilitator and participant can be tricky to navigate because of the transactional nature of modern ceremonies. We in the modern world aren't living with our tribe. We haven't been to funerals with each other, we haven't seen each other's kids grow up. So the facilitator may be someone you heard was good and not have any previous contact with. Is the facilitator there because they care about you? Are they there because they are being paid? In our society, we put one on a pedestal and demonize the other, but most people exist in both camps. Real relationship between facilitator and participant means having honest conversations about things like this and potentially having other triggering things come up. Working through those challenges deepens the connection, especially without a shared history. When our wounds resurface in ceremony (as they often do), there’s already a shared past of navigating them.
Facilitator and the Plant Medicine: A strong connection to the medicine is essential. I once spoke with someone who had taken psilocybin three times and wanted to begin guiding others. To me, that’s like going on three dates and then getting married. In ayahuasca traditions, facilitators often spend years drinking it, forging a profound relationship with the plants before ever guiding others.
Facilitator and the Spirit World: What happens when a participant encounters a deity or ancestor that has been suppressed for generations. Has the facilitator experienced working with these types of energies? Have they made connections with their own ancestors? These aren't the kinds of things you learn in a weekend workshop. They are developed over years and years of real world practice.
Facilitator and Community: I've found that relationships in the spirit world mirror everyday life. Have you looked at the relationship your facilitator has with their family and friends? What do those relationships look like? Being in a good relationship with people in the real world demands commitment, presence, and accountability. These are important to form the backbone of a strong ceremonial structure.
Ultimately, a well-crafted container for psychedelic work isn’t about eliminating danger or discomfort. It’s about creating a web of relationships strong enough to hold participants as they experience the profound, transformative cycles of death and rebirth, which forms the true foundation of any meaningful ritual space.
If you're seeking a deeper, more embodied approach to integration and ceremonial work, I invite you to connect with me. My practice is rooted in decades of experience with Ayahuasca, Kashmir Shaivism, and movement-based healing traditions. I help individuals navigate their plant medicine journeys through bodywork, song, rhythm, and shadow work, guiding them to uncover and embody their unique gifts within a sacred, relational framework.
Book a session with me or learn more about my work here: https://www.plantmedicinepeople.com/coaches/justin-levy
About the Author
Justin Levy has spent the majority of his life exploring the intersections of spiritual traditions and Plant Medicine, with a particular focus on kundalini. He started his own spiritual healing and integration practice (called Kundalini Mediumship) in 2009, based on decades of personal work with Ayahuasca and other plants, the spiritual tradition of Kashmir Shaivism, and the martial art of capoeira. His practice incorporates bodywork, movement and dance, and rhythm and song, with a particular emphasis on shadow work and integration. Justin has been teaching this medicine since 2011 and leading ceremonial work since 2020. His focus is on helping each person connect to and embody their own unique gifts and medicine within the context of tradition.
