Private Coaching
1:1 Preparation and Integration Coaching
If you are a participant registered for one of our programs at any point in your program, you are encouraged to consider supplementary 1:1 coaching. While our preparation program is comprehensive and includes one 1:1 intake session with a retreat facilitator, some of our program participants find that private coaching can greatly assist in both the preparation and integration processes.
Preparation Coaching
Your Beckley Retreats Coach will work with you to identify appropriate topics, which may include:
- Building understanding of how psychedelics work and what to expect in the experience
- Gaining confidence and personal agency in the preparation process
- Setting clear intentions and digging deeper into why you feel called to participate in a psychedelic journey
- Exploring your protective mechanisms and developing insight into inner resistance to be better prepared for your journey
- Allaying fears and worries through expectation-setting and reframing; becoming equipped with tools, skills, and resources to navigate potentially challenging psychedelic experiences
- Setting up for a soft landing after your journey through mindset shifts and taking preparatory actions
- Gaining a deeper understanding of how to talk about the psychedelic experience with family and friends
Integration Coaching
Your Beckley Retreats Coach will work with you to identify appropriate topics, which may include:
- Making meaning of your journey
- Responding to a fading experience and anchoring to a beneficial psychedelic sensation using somatic recall practices
- Incorporating supportive skills and practices (self-regulation, self-reflection, mindfulness, responsivity vs. reactivity, boundary-setting, etc.) into daily routines
- Troubleshooting barriers and potential derailers to sustain personal growth and wellbeing
- Continuing self-discovery through “parts work” (working with narratives around parts of self)
- Generating personal accountability and setting and monitoring goals
- Reintegrating back into relationships
- Harmonizing how you’ve changed as a result of your psychedelic experience with your life – and changing your life to meet you as you’ve changed
Session
- Receive a complimentary tool: Intention Setting for Coaching.*
- Receive two complimentary tools: Intention Setting for Coaching & Whole Self Journaling Prompts*
- Receive three complimentary tools: Intention Setting for Coaching, Whole Self Journaling Prompts, and 5 Days of Gratitude*
Testimonial
“I approached this retreat with some challenging issues in my life, and having the extra support of this individual coaching sessions has made my preparation smooth and I am now in a great place for this retreat..The work I have done…over the last few weeks has unlocked some deep and profound realisations. I feel all my hard work has finally come together and I understand myself better and I’m now ready for this next chapter of my journey.“ (2023 program participant)
The Coaches: Highly Experienced and Here for You at Every Step
Our people are what make Beckley Retreats what it is today. We are committed to serving others and continuing our own inner work.
Our world-class team of coaches have decades of combined experience creating safe and transformational spaces and working with psychedelics.
Kosu Boudreau
Kosu is a registered trauma psychotherapist and integration specialist in a private practice in Ontario, Canada. She worked for more than 18 years as a spiritual care therapist in hospitals with a focus on trauma, mental health/addictions, and palliative care. Kosu provides trauma-informed facilitation as well as preparation and integration support for Beckley Retreats guests.
| Life can feel overwhelming, and the path to true self-discovery isn’t always clear. As a psychedelic-assisted therapist/facilitator with advanced training in trauma-informed care and integration practices, Kosu is here to help you find clarity, let go of outdated beliefs, and reconnect with your Truest Self—the version of you that’s free, authentic, and fully alive. Every journey is personal, and so is her approach. Whether you’re navigating life transitions, processing trauma, or seeking a deeper connection to your purpose, she’ll meet you where you are and walk alongside you. Kosu offers a safe, non-judgmental space where your voice is heard and your experiences are honored. Timezone: Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) |
Tory Giardina
Tory (she/her) is a licensed Physician Assistant and certified Circling Facilitator. She now works for Beckley as a Coach and Medical Screener. She is training to become a Hakomi psychotherapist, a modality that primarily uses mindfulness and somatics for transformation and healing.
| During her decade working as a Physician Assistant in an oncology & hospice unit, Tory developed deep relationships with her terminally ill patients. She realized the strong connection between living and dying – those patients who had lived more fully and joyfully, faced their deaths more fully and gracefully. It was there that her mission became clear. She wanted to learn how to live “well” and to help others do the same. For Tory, living well means living from your heart, in your truth, and she supports her clients to find their most authentic and vibrant selves. She believes that personal, individualized support along with psychedelics, art, and community are essential components of our healing journeys. Her hope is that we may each find the power to bring more love, creativity and curiosity into our one and only precious life. Timezone: Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) |
Livi Joy
Livi Joy has been creating sacred space for groups and individuals, and engaging her own entheogenic practice for over 20 years. After gaining skills as a psychotherapist with an MA in Clinical Counseling and out in the “wild” as a Zendo volunteer, Livi left the licensure world to support entheogenic experiences in the context of spiritual care.
| In addition to screening applicants for Beckley Retreats, Livi is an ordained minister/facilitator, a pioneer in developing health and safety protocols for community-based practice, a facilitator educator and mentor, and a preparation/integration coach. Livi also is a certified EFT practitioner, a Reiki Master, and facilitator of several embodiment modalities such as Authentic Movement and BodySongs. Livi’s offerings are dedicated to paradigm shift; to composting the fear-based, pathologizing model while cultivating a cooperative, mystery-loving, inclusive, power-within model, so that all humans may realize their inherent wholeness. |
Lauren MacDonald
Lauren is a psychiatry doctor, psychedelic therapy guide and retreat facilitator. She regularly facilitates psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands and is a passionate group facilitator who finds love in co-creating spaces that support connection, healing, and growth.
| Lauren initially studied and practiced western psychology and psychiatry until a stage IV cancer diagnosis led her on a personal journey of healing towards a deeper understanding of what it means to provide whole-person, mind-body-heart-spirit care. For the last few years Lauren has worked as a clinical trial doctor, therapy guide, and researcher at The Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, where she has dedicated her attention across trials investigating psilocybin-assisted therapy for anorexia nervosa and fibromyalgia, as well as DMT for treatment-resistant depression. Timezone: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) |
Mark Mabon
Mark is a certified Systemic coach and Family Constellations practitioner, with 18 years parallel experience facilitating psychedelic experiences in ceremonial settings. As part of his coaching practice, he helps clients prepare for and integrate their psychedelic encounters, with an emphasis on creating an ongoing, everyday lived experience that incorporates the depth and meaning found there.
| Mark combines a deep warmth and compassion with a strong clarity and unwavering dedication to truth and acceptance. His work is about surfacing, facing and ultimately integrating the facts of our lives, including our family background and the entanglements inevitably found there. He draws from Internal Family Systems and Somatic work to help clients navigate daily life with greater presence and authenticity, which has made his work popular with creatives, performing artists, and entrepreneurs, with a frequent focus on addictive behaviors. He has been married for 15 years, has 2 children and also works around conscious communication, relationship and parenting. Timezone: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) |
Hanifa Nayo Washington
Hanifa Nayo Washington, she/her/hers, is a sacred activist, DEIB/JEDI facilitator, digital designer, and healing justice practitioner with 25 years of values-based nonprofit leadership. Hanifa, a reiki master practitioner, musician, and creative, works at the intersection of mindfulness, place making, and social justice to cultivate organizations, gatherings, spaces, and experiences rooted in the values of beloved community.
| Hanifa is a founding team member of the Fireside Project, a nonprofit that is creating systemic change in the field of psychedelics in three key domains: safety, diversity, and equitable access. A burgeoning thought leader in the field of psychedelic activism, Hanifa also serves as an advisor for Reconsider, East Forest’s latest project Journey Space. In 2022, Hanifa was appointed as a Founding Member of the Global Wellness Institute Psychedelics & Healing Initiative. Hanifa is also the Co-founder and Organizing Principal of One Village Healing, an online BIPOC centered healing, resilience, and psychedelic wellness space. In 2017 Hanifa released her 3rd album Mantras for the Revolution. Hanifa offers this soulful, connective, kirtan-style, collective practice as medicine in this time of revolution that is both- within us and around us. Hanifa is a native of Detroit, Michigan. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Timezone: Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) |
Ben Sheinwald
Ben’s work is about supporting people to connect to their true nature or essence and from this place to become conscious creators of their lives. He is trained in Biodynamic Body psychotherapy as well as coaching, and so brings a deep understanding of the synergistic connection between body, mind, spirit and the heart. He works from a place of presence and acceptance.
| In psychedelic work, Ben supports his clients to find the pearls of their experience and find ways for these insights to become an embodied reality in their day-to-day life. He believes deeply in the life force as a movement within us towards our own unique blueprint for wellbeing and vitality. He supports people to trust the life force for their growth and evolution. Timezone: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) |
Dr. Dingle Spence
Dingle Spence is a Jamaican physician with training in Clinical Oncology and Palliative Care. She has worked in this area of cancer care for over thirty years and has considerable experience in having serious illness conversations with people facing end of life and in providing support to their families. Many issues that people who are coming to the end of life are dealing with cannot easily be fixed or solved; the important thing at this time is for people to feel accompanied, heard, respected, and supported as their journey towards transition becomes more poignant and more real.
| Dingle brings to the table her experience in working with people at this time in their life and can provide a gentle supportive presence based on years of doing this work at the hospital bedside, in people’s homes, and more recently in an online setting. Her own personal work as a both a participant and facilitator in the psychedelic space has only helped deepen her understanding of what clients are experiencing and what their needs may be as they approach the end of their own lives. Dingle is available to provide coaching assistance and support to Beckley clients dealing with these issues. Timezone: Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) |
Karen Welch
Karen is a Facilitator, Integrative Coach, and Qigong Practitioner. Her practice is rooted in biodynamics that explore the relationship between feeling states and wider fields of perception. She brings a focus on deep relaxation and the dynamics of working from our centre to support expansion states.
| For over 20 years, she was an Organisation Development Consultant and Senior Leadership Coach, building on her postgraduate studies in the human potential movement. Since then, Karen has developed a transformational coaching practice that includes psychedelic preparation and integration, and also being a mentor for trainee psychedelic practitioners. Karen has a background in female spirituality and ceremony. She has a passion for exploring experiential practices from many cultures that align our hearts with new aspects of reality. She brings intimacy and simplicity to her work and a sense of joy. She shared this with her Qigong teaching. Karen believes we are an integral part of a living and dynamic cosmos. Once we deeply experience this, everything changes. Psychedelics are a direct means for us to get out of our own way, so we can be the people we were always meant to be. Timezone: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) |
Important considerations
- Coaching is not therapy. However, our coaching may be informed by psychotherapeutic modalities such as Internal Family Systems, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Traumatic Incident Reduction Therapy or other therapeutic modalities.
- All of our coaches are also retreat program facilitators – but not all of our retreat facilitators are coaches. (Some facilitators are ceremony musicians, yoga teachers, etc.). While you may be drawn to a particular facilitator on retreat, that facilitator may not have formal coaching experience and thus may not be participating in the Beckley Retreats Coaching Program.
- When available, you may be able to schedule coaching sessions with a select facilitator-coach present on your retreat. This option provides continuity and depth in the coach-participant relationship.
