1. Objective
This course is designed to enable participants to guide clients through a healing processes with the help of substances which induce non-ordinary states of consciousnes, either in individual or in group sessions.
2. Specific qualifications
A successful participant will be able to
• guide clients through fundamentally transformative processes
• be emotionally sufficiently stable to expose themselves to very intense emotions in the course of the interaction with clients
• stay with oneself and be present for a client at the same time
• identify and to experience a state of an open heart in the process
• gain a deeper understanding of different states of consciousness and of different ways to induce non-ordinary states of consciousness
• aquire the knowledge of the specific effects of the different types of medicine, commonly used in this field
• plan, design and guide sessions using this kind of medicine
• be of service
• distinguish between the process that client(s) experience and their own concerns and transformations
• work with transference and countertransference, projection and projective identification
• use different elements supporting deep trance healing processes such as: music, singing, incense, light, touch, words, prayer
• understand a shamanic and a psychotherapeutic approach, the differences between them and possible combinations
• place this work into a broader context of psychology, psychotraumatology, psychotherapy, and different approaches to healing
• aquire knowledge and skills in this process that can be used with clients even if you do not intend to work with mind enhancing agents
• have acquired a deeper understanding of human interaction
• develop your individual approach in this work and to integrate different tools into the process
3. Content
1. Legal aspects
Legal conditions and suggestions.
2. Neurochemistry of psychoactive substances
A brief synopsis on the brain chemistry and how psychoactive substances work.
3. Pharmacology of different types of medicine
A discussion of the various substances’ qualities often used in this context. Possible combinations of medicines. Unhealthy combinations. Medical risks. Choosing the right substance.
4. Influence of substance, dosage, set and setting
5. Ethics
The ethics of caring and how to take care of yourself that you will not cross boundaries of the client.
6. Elements of the setting
Place, environment, time, light and darkness, smell, music, invocations, prayers, words and language and more.
Considering the broader context: Substance assisted therapy as a form of therapy in and by itself or its use as a supplementing instrument within a broader design of psychotherapy.
Different possible settings will be used and discussed.
7. Music
The possible effect of music. Playing instruments, singing, playing music from electronic devices. how to select music. The effects of silence.
8. Interventions
Motivation for interventions. How much, when and in which way?
9. The client
Preparation, intentions, post event support, cooperation with psychotherapists.
10. Shamanic approach versus psychotherapy approach
Choice of method and potential combinations.
11. Psychotraumatology
The course will lead to a comprehensive understanding of trauma and what is happening in traumatic situations on different levels (body, mind and soul). There will be an introduction into the poly vagal theory of Porges and the work of Levine. We will discuss how to identify signs of trauma and how to manage traumatic experiences and look at the difference between shock and trauma or shock and need shock. We will also cover individual trauma and intergenerational trauma.
We also look in detail at the following and typical traumatic experiences:
– Vanished twin symtom
– Sexual abuse or rape
– Emotional neglect
– Physical violence
– Surgery
– Accident
– Abortion and survived trial of abortion
– Poisoning during pregnancy
– Cesarian birth and birth with use of vacuum extractor or forceps
– Incubator
Of course, if any additional trauma will show up with any of the participants, we will properly deal with it and teach how to handle it.
12. Pre- and perinatal traumatology
We look at Stan Grof’s BPM and the stages of prenatal development described by Wiliam Emerson. Participants will learn how to work with William Emerson’s prenatal therapy, which expands Grof’s approach into the time before conception.
13. Family constellation and the influece of the ancestors
We also deal with the influence of family systems: Understanding the role of the ancestors in indigenous cultures and a novel western understanding of the influence of ancestors found with the help of constellation work. The function of representation. Systemic rules. Specific constellation roles such as triangulation, rescuer, parentification.
14. The victim triangle
The roles of victim, agressor and rescuer.
15. Systemic view
Understanding that each behaviour makes complete sense in a specific context, helps you to search for this context. If it is found this always is a big healing process. The training will teach necessary or helpful questions to guide clients through such a search.
16. Past lives
We look at past lives and the effect they exert on our present lives.
17. Working with the physical and energetic body
We investigate how to treat tension and physical pain, the relation of increasing and releasing these, relation between physical pain or tension and emotions.
18. Protection
We investigate how we can feel and comprehend the process that the client is going through, perhaps even participate in this process and how we can cope with undesirable consequences from absorbing parts of the process from the client. This includes a discussion of keeping distance to the client and the concept of closeness in particular with respect to the common western dogma of maintaining therapeutic distance. We also observe shamanic protection.
19. Ritual and shamanic technology (indigenous technology)
There will be an introduction to ritual as a language of the soul. This includes an exploration of ritual tension and the “ritual bow.” The participants will be encouraged to make their own shamanic instruments and to use these in their work.
If needed there could be an optional workshop for interested participants where we work on producing shamanic instruments, e. g. making a drum and protection tools. This will not be part oft the training as outlined here, because it requires additional time. And perhaps not everyone wants or needs something like this. However this may be an offer as a possible addition to the course.
19. Spiritual mapping
This aspect covers the issue of how we can navigate in unknown areas of oneself and the client and to understand which realms a client might enter while going through a spiritual experience.
20. Integration
We explore the importance and the meaning of integration during and after a session. We consider different elements and tools to enhance integration.
These are the topics and themes planed for the training course. Participants and course leaders will mutually decide on how intense each topic will be dwelled upon according to the interests and needs of the group.
4. Setting
The training will follow a modular design as participants come from different countries.
There will be 7 units, three per year and one thereafter.
Each unit will have one or more topics, follow a similar structure and last 7 days. The first day will begin at 6.00 p.m. All participants are invited to arrive earlier to settle and rest. All units will finish on the 7th day not later than 5.00 p.m. The time may be adapted to transportation possibilities.
In the course of each unit there will be two sessions in which participants gain experience with different kinds of medicine.
Starting after completion of all modules the training will continue with assisting clients in sessions guided and supervised by manuel aicher and sabine schulte. There will be at least 5 sessions for each participant. The assistence under supervision is aimed at helping the participants to gain practical experience. There will be reviews after each session. The number of assitence sessions will be decided between each participant and the trainers. The criteria are sufficient self-confidence and maturity to get started with this work independently according to the above mentioned qualifications. There are those who are ready after 3 sessions, others need much more. All assistance sessions need to be completed not later than 5 years after the concluding course unit.
All participants need to be aware and accept that the course is based on an intimately connected and closed group, i. e. there will be no one joining the training after the course has started and each member of the group needs to be committed, right from the onset, to complete the training. By necessity there are always reasons to give up commitments. However we ask that reasons to cease participation in the course and leaving the group must be serious and substantial.
The group’s size will be eight to twelve persons.
5. Tools
Modern european and north american traditions usually restrict the process of learning to excathedra-teaching, addressing, above all, the intellect, and also practical instruction and experiences from working. If therapy is involved also self experience is demanded. The training will use all these topoi concerned with learning.
There exists another way of learning which can be observed in different indigenous cultures and which westerners find difficult to understand and to accept: Gaining in experience by participating in rituals. This is however particularily true for shamanic traditions: Participants will learn that there is a transfer of knowledge which circumvents the transmission of intellectual knowledge. The training will include this way of learning: That there are teachers in the spiritual world whom you may address and who may transfer their knowledge to you if all is well prepared. Such knowledge does not primarily addresse the content of learning but the way it passes into you. The course employs a number of ritual processes. this raises the general question of how you can open yourself sufficiently to access this knowledge which is all arround anyhow. Therefore it will be important to learn how to invite the transmitters of knowledge to be of service to you. in our culture the principle issue consists in removing blockages that have been built up in an environment dominated by intellect. As far as possible this kind of learning process, grounded in ritual, will also form part of the training.
1. Practical sessions
Each unit has two work-sessions in practical use of medicine. In particular there are two aims:
1. Providing opportunities for self experience and healing your own wounds – one of the main ressources to achieve this are the altered states of consciousness subject to this training. These sessions teaches you how the healing process works and enables participants to guide other persons through a similar experience: You can best accomplish what you have experienced and gone through by yourself!
2. Participants are invited to experiment with the trainer’s inputs in this state of consciousness: They are asked to work, judge and see how they can apply such inputs and insights from the training to validate their efficiency for their own work or as their own methods and thus integrate the inputs. (see also below 3.)
Each participant will have to write proceedings of each session. This will be send to the trainers and all other participants. Between the units the trainers will provide questions and offer feedback for further understanding and possibilities to learn how to work with such sessions and how integration could look like.
2. Alchemical divination
Ralph Metzner introduced this term which refers to forms of controlled and guided meditations. There will be a number of sessions which will lead you along the most satisfying paths that the universe offers to our unconsciousness. Participants can follow such paths without using medicine or with its help.
3. Teaching
The course offers teaching sessions. Sessions will include time for questions and discussion. The structure of the course is designed in such a way that there will be no need to claim truth. the trainers offer inputs which every participant will be asked to work through during the sessions and to validate the insights for themselves. In this context participants are encouraged to search for solutions that suit them best. the training course does not result in a formal working method. Instead it asks you to build up a very personal way for healing, rooted deeply inside the heart of each individual participant. This cannot be achieved in the ordinary format of western teaching. It requires an open mind, comprehension with all senses and adaptation, profound knowledge and experience of various approaches and teaching traditions. This should lead to and grow into an intimate and personal manner when you are dealing with clients and finding your own way to treat them. Following a teacher ought not be a question of belief or copy but of guided explorations and insight into your own experiences that will lead to a complexer and also comprehensive understanding and, ultimately, to old wisdom.
4. Meditation
Guided meditation or body meditation (e. g. Kundalini meditation by Osho) are elements of the course.
5. Council
This is a special way of communicating within a group originating in north american indigenous cultures which helps reducing speed and thus supporting the expression of the soul rather than the intellect.
6. Threshold walks
This tool from the context of vision quests leads you into a modest trance and helps you to enhance your perceptions of nature, use it as a mirror and discover it as a source for spiritual power and energy. It will allow you to enter into new relationships with natural elements. This also results in a wider circle of communication partners.
7. Working in groups
We may choose to discuss or work on certain themes in smaller groups.
8. Buddies
During the whole training two participants will form a tandem of support for each other and for integrating the sessions and the material learned. There is no strict rule how this has to be, but contact between these two buddies is encouraged and experience has shown that this is a very supportive element of the training.
9. Constellation work
This very helpful instrument is not strictly part of the course programme. But students will get an introduction how constellation work works and how it can help in general for all therapeutic work. We will use it as a useful tool which offers also a possibility to getting to know this method in practise.
10. Feedback of the group
There will be group meetings with feedback from the members of the group for a single member. This will, in the first instance, acquaint a participant on how s/he is perceived by other persons within the group. This mirroring of perceptions is a rare and helpful experience. secondly, this will be a practical introduction into the role of a therapist, in particular to the issue of how to confront clients with so far unknown perceptions of his or her person. This will be supervised by the trainers.
11. Homework
There will be some homework (not all that much): Reading literature, “chewing on” or contemplating important issues, themes and questions. Writing down your reflections about it. Some tasks will involve using certain tools on your own and for your own development.
12. Opportunities for assisting in the work with clients
We will make an effort that participants have the possibility to assist the trainers in sessions outside the framework of the course. This experience will help in understanding the dimensions of the work of a therapist without being fully responsable.
13. Handicraft
There will be an opportunity to produce objects supporting your work with clients, but this will be offered in an additional workshop on shamanic tools.
14. Practical tools
Each module will introduce one tool which is helpful in this work, be it resourcing, integration or other support, and which the participants are encouraged to use and experiment with with their buddies in the time until the next module.
15. (Love)
Is it a tool?
6. Necessary requirements for participation
Participants need to be in good physical health and are required to inform the trainers about all major medical problems, especially heart diseases, before the onset of the course. Undergoing psychotherapeutic treatment is no hindrance to participation. However it will be necessary to inform the trainers about such treatment and about the general reasons for it. details do not need to be told.
Especially psychotic or borderline tendencies can cause trouble in our practical work process. Any such symptoms and also psychiatric treatment have to be discussed with the trainers.
Participants need to be in a position but also willing to stop taking psychopharmacological medication up to three weeks before each unit begins. Further details will be discussed between trainers and participants.
As participants need to know what they will be trained in only those participants will be accepted to the training who at least once did have a substance assisted therapy session with at least one of the trainers. For those who do not meet this requirement the trainers will offer one retreat at the place the training will take place (module 0), lasting 5 days.
Unit 0 February 15th to 19th, 2027
7. Language
If there will be enough German speaking participants, the course will be held in German. If not, it will be held in English this would mean, that sessions and group commuication will be conducted in English. German mother tongue participants may revert to German in situations when the group is not involved.
8. Time
Unit 1 May 25th to 31th, 2027
Unit 2 October 24th to 30th, 2027
Unit 3 March 14th to 20th , 2028
Unit 4 June 13th to 19th, 2028
Unit 5 October 10th to 16th, 2028
Unit 6 March 13th to 19th, 2029
Unit 7 June 12th to 18th, 2029
We devote each unit to one or several specific themes. The selection of themes will be decided in the preparation process.
9. Place
The training will take place in southern Portugal. Details will be communicated if a candidate is accepted to join the training.
The best way to get there from a far distance is via the airport of Faro, from which you can take a taxi for 80 Euros or join a taxi with other participants, so that thte cost would be 40 Euros.
There will be accomodation in rooms with two to four beds.
10. Cost
1. Expense
The fee for each unit is
• 1500 – 1900 Euro, depending on your financial situation. The fee is for training and substances used.
• 700 Euro is for food, lodging and medicine
This includes sheets, bedding and a towel.
The food served is nearly all organic.
Please note that it is advisable to keep a budget of about 300 to 500 euro for literature or other materials that may be necessary.
The cost for assisting in a session will be
For 1 session: • 120 to 200 Euro, depending on financial means, for supervision and medicines used.
• 80 Euro for food and lodging
For 2 sessions (5 days): • 200 to 400 Euro, depending on financial means, for supervision and medicines used.
• 450 Euro for food and lodging
For 2 sessions (7 days): • 350 to 500 Euro, depending on financial means, for supervision and medicines used.
• 520 Euro for food and lodging
The overall costs (training, food and lodging) for all modules will require at least 15’700 euro (without travelling expences).
2. Lack of money
If you feel that you want to participate but do not have the means, please contact the trainers. we will find a way. We understand that this might put you in a uncomfortable situation involving feelings of shame and infringed independence. However this theme will inevitably come up anyhow during the course! It offers a first opportunity for an exercise. And this will be kept conficential.
3. Payments
Commiting to the course requires an upfront payment of 5000 Euro as a retainer not later than 120 days before the first unit beginns. The retainer will be set off against the final payments for the last units of the programme, counting from the last one backwards. With payment of the retainer your place will be guaranteed.
You are asked to pay each unit and the remaing amount for the last unit before the start of each unit. The same applies to assistance sessions.
4. Cancellation policy
If you cancel the reservation 90 days before the start of the first unit, you will be refunded 2000 Euro. If you cancel your reservation 60 days before the start of the first unit, you will be refunded 1000 Euro. If you cancel 30 days before the start of the first unit or later, you will not be refunded. If somebody else is taking over your vacant reservation, you will be refunded 2000 Euro.
The minimum number of participants is eight. Should there be less course members or should the trainer(s) not be able to offer the course due to health problems or other (certainly significant) reasons, you will be returned the retainer in total and all other payments already made to the trainer(s). We will not refund payments for already finished units or other services rendered. The trainer(s) will in no case and under no circumstances pay to participants anything more and above what the participants have already paid towards the running of the course.
11. Certification
Each participant, who completed the training programme (all modules and the assistances), will receive a certificate of participation.
12. Trainers
Manuel Aicher (www.manuel-aicher.com)
Trained by Friederike Meckel-Fischer, Ralph Metzner, William Emerson, Matthias Varga von Kibéd, and others. Initiated into west african shamanic work and into the Bwiti tradition by Bernadette Rebienot (gabun). 30 Years of experience in this work.
Sabine Schulte
Gestalt therapist. Orienting analyst, pysychoimaginative traumatherapist, somatic experiencing and soma embodiment therapist, more than 15 years of experience in this work.
It could be that external specialists will be invited to contribute to certain topics. Such persons will join the group for a limited amount of time (half a day or a day) only.
13. Confidentiality
Confidality will be an essential requirement of the entire training course and beyond. You are asked not to talk to anyone about any other participant of the training course without his consent.
14. Questions and registration
If you want to ask questions or want to take part in this training programme, please contact
Institute for Substance-Assisted Therapy, Rotis 7, 88299 Leutkirch, Germany
phone +49 7591 908 3001, e-mail: institute@substanzunterstuetzte-therapie.org
Registration is closing on January 31st, 2027. Reservations are booked in the order of the receipt of the registration. As the training is aimed to get more and more trained people into practice, there might be a priority for those who already know that they will use the work with clients, if there will be more interest than place.
If you want to register or have any questions, click here.