Working with
Saj Razvi
Receive PSIP sessions directly from the developer of the model
Saj Razvi is the founder of the Psychedelic Somatic Institute (PSI) and the primary developer of Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy (PSIP).
This page is for individuals who are interested in working with Saj directly — either on a short term consultation basis reviewing their own therapeutic process which can be done remotely, or for ongoing therapeutic PSIP work with Saj which can include in-person intensives.
This is not a general therapy offering. Saj’s private practice is limited and specialized. Entry into either of the services requires an initial paid one-hour consultation to determine whether working together is appropriate and useful, along with the submission of a pre-consultation questionnaire.
One-hour consultation: $500 USD
Is this the right kind of work for you?
PSIP is a body based, highly relational, comprehensive trauma modality designed for the altered state of consciousness induced by psychedelic medicines. The focus in PSIP is to move past the defenses, distractions and management strategies of the conscious mind to where core experiences and programing from childhood and trauma live. We work in the unconscious mind at the level of the autonomic nervous system to find the you that still feels the aloneness, neglect, abuse, insecurity, or overwhelm of what you went through. We use the psychedelic, the therapeutic container, the autonomic processing pathway and the relationship to reach the much deeper, non-cognitive, hidden you.
People often seek PSIP after they have already done substantial personal, spiritual, or psychedelic work, but still find they remain stuck when it comes to symptoms or patterns in their life. Clients seeking PSIP therapy may have spent years engaged in traditional talk therapy focusing on telling the story, insight or cognitive behavioral interventions. Often times, people will have engaged with underground psychedelic work either in traditional ceremonial settings or with a trip sitter to deal with their mental health concerns. You will find that PSIP feels quite different from any of these. It feels like a much deeper, innate intelligence arises through your own body the orchestrate healing.
01 Early or developmental trauma such as attachment wounding
02 Complex trauma generated by repeated threats experienced in childhood, typically at the hands of family members
03 Dissociative symptoms: emotional numbing, hopelessness, collapse, depression, mental confusion, feelings of emptiness, feeling blank, floaty, depersonallized
04 Symptoms that persist despite gaining more insight
05 Non-responder to psychedelic medicines
06 Transpersonal or visually stimulating psychedelic experiences that did not resolve symptoms
07 A sense that “talk therapy helped, but did not reach the root”
A note from Saj
In addition to my primary work teaching and supervising mental health professionals, I work with a limited number of private clients. My focus is not general psychotherapy, coaching, or casual psychedelic integration.
I work with people for whom PSIP is likely to be a good fit: people with enough capacity to engage in the deep psychological deconstructive and reconstructive processes that are often necessary to shift childhood developmental programming.
The first consultation and pre-consultation questionnaire is designed to help both of us determine whether this work is appropriate.
Although there is plenty of educational material available online, you do not need to already understand PSIP. You do need to understand that there are a lot of unrealistic, unhelpful myths regarding psychedelic therapy and healing that need to be clarified so your expectations fit reality. The truth is that psychedelics are not a magic pill that you take, float away into some transpersonal or visionary dreamscape for one to three sessions, and your problems are solved when you return. Taking a psychedelic does not automatically make your long held psychological defenses disappear.
To be clear, this is not easy work but it is compelling work because what you will encounter is fundamentally you…your history, your childhood, your sense of other people, your sense of the world. This depth of psychedelic work involves significant engagement on your part as well as your practitioner. Unlike most of traditional mental health which is symptom management oriented, a psychedelic substance in combination with your nervous system will have no interest in better coping or management. Instead, the process can involve deconstruction and reconstruction. It is not mild, it is not easy. Any deep healing, if it is to work with your core structure, should be destabilizing. The more your biology and identity were formed in a traumatic context, the more you can expect to undergo a deconstructive - reconstructive process.
Personally speaking, my calling in life is to accompany people in these places. I consider it an honor to be in relationship with you in the most impossibly alone worst places you have inside. It is your goodness, your life force, that is struggling and adapting under the circumstances of your life. I trust every bit of what’s happening there and have no interest in turning away.
Why do this depth of work?
What we see with psychedelic therapy in contrast to traditional therapy is remarkable. We gain access to layers of programming that are otherwise inaccessible due to dissociation and other defenses. The psychedelic will frequently support regression back to early, even pre-verbal infantile states. This is not the adult mind imagining what it was like to be a child, this legitimately feels like client becomes the child and is in relationship with the practitioner. This is therapeutic gold, it gives us the ability to process traumatic events in a very visceral way, not understand the nightmare through the adult mind, but process it through a very supported, fluid biology and highly attuned relationship. Once the trauma reactivity has passed (over multiple sessions), the client’s system engages in a period of organic, post-traumatic growth. The system re-engages in the very developmental processes that were stunted because of the trauma. In other words, we see the nervous system finally begin to reach out for the parent/practitioner, we see the system re-establish attachment, trust, soothing, and engage other relational developmental processes that should have taken place. We see negative projections that are so damaging to a client’s relationships significantly decrease. This of course means the adult personality built on top of the nightmare and the stunted developmental processes begins to shift as well.
Please review the FAQ and other recommended materials on this page to make the most of your consultation.
Before you book: watch or listen first
Because this work is specialized, I recommend that you watch or listen to at least one introduction before booking.
These resources will give you a better feel for the orientation of the work, the kind of clinical territory PSIP addresses, and whether this approach resonates with you.
If the material feels compelling, challenging, or unusually relevant to your own process, a paid consultation may be a useful next step.
Ways to work with Saj
1.
Pre-consultation questionnaire and initial paid consultation
This is the starting point regardless if you just want a second opinion on your process or the work you are doing, or if you want to begin working with Saj.
The consultation is a one-hour meeting. It may be used to discuss your history, current goals, previous therapy psychedelic experience, clinical fit, and what kind of work may best serve you.
A consultation does not guarantee that Saj will take you on as a client. It is an initial meeting to determine professional fit.
Fee: $500 USD for one hour
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