Foundation Programme in Interdisciplinary Psychedelic Studies & Practice
The Mirari Foundation Programme was designed in direct response to this emerging landscape — built by practitioners, in collaboration with some of the most respected researchers, clinicians, and educators in the global psychedelic field. Whether your background is clinical, somatic, educational, or community-based, the programme meets you where you are.
Join the programme
Why Now?
Why Psychedelics, Why Now
Psychedelics are rapidly moving from the margins into mainstream science, healthcare, public policy, and therapeutic practice. Universities, medical institutions, and research centers worldwide are expanding psychedelic research, while public interest in mental health, consciousness exploration, and human flourishing continues to grow at an unprecedented pace.
Many professionals are already encountering this shift — in their practice, their communities, and their personal lives. Clients are returning from retreats with questions that existing frameworks weren't designed to answer. Colleagues, friends and family members are exploring psychedelics for their own unique reasons. The cultural conversation is moving fast, and the people best positioned to support it — therapists, coaches, guides, researchers, educators, and healthcare professionals — are often doing so without adequate preparation.
The Need for Competent Practitioners
At the same time, access is increasing faster than professional preparedness. Therapists, coaches, healthcare professionals, researchers, and community practitioners are increasingly encountering psychedelic-related support needs, yet many existing training programmes remain fragmented or disconnected from the realities of practice. The field now requires professionals who can work skillfully across ethical, psychological, somatic, relational, and cultural dimensions.
The scientific momentum is real and significant. Psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, DMT, and Spravato (Esketamine) have all received FDA Breakthrough Therapy designations, and landmark trials at institutions including Johns Hopkins, NYU, and Imperial College London have produced results that are reshaping how the wider helping and healing professions think about consciousness, healing, and human change. What the research consistently shows is that outcomes depend heavily on the quality of human support surrounding the entirety of the experience — the preparation, the relational presence, the integration. Whether in clinical or non-clinical settings, that is where practitioner skills become one of the most critical variables for safety and meaningfully positive outcomes.
The Mirari Foundation Programme
The Mirari Foundation Programme was designed in direct response to this emerging landscape - built by practitioners, in collaboration with some of the most respected researchers, clinicians, and educators in the global psychedelic field. Whether your background is clinical, somatic, educational, or community-based, the programme meets you where you are. The curriculum draws deeply on neuroscience, somatics, ethics, harm reduction, relational skills, and real-world practice. Moving far beyond mere theory, this comprehensive introduction equips you with the tangible skills, values, and ethical grounding needed to clearly define and confidently hold your scope of practice.
Programme Overview: Why interdisciplinary?
An Interdisciplinary Foundation for Psychedelic Practice
Over the course of 12-weeks our Foundation Programme gives students a deep interdisciplinary introduction to the vastness of psychedelic practice. Our curriculum has been co-designed and reviewed by some of the most respected leaders in the global psychedelic movement. Our teaching team has been hand-selected because of their incredible knowledge, and also due to their ability to translate complex theory into practical application, and deeply anchor these skills within our students.
The Foundation Programme is a meeting place of diverse disciplines, with each discipline providing an important perspective through which to develop an interconnected understanding of how to ethically and competently support people's use of psychedelics.
Learning Through Interconnected Lenses
The curriculum draws from neuroscience, pharmacology, psychology, somatics, ethics, Indigenous traditions, harm reduction, and real-world practice-based evidence — not as isolated subject areas, but as interconnected lenses for understanding psychedelic experiences. Here are just two examples of what we mean:
We don't teach neuroscience as abstract biology. Grasping how psychedelics quiet the Default Mode Network directly helps you anticipate a client's experience, practice grounding and mindfulness skills, and manage expectations with integrity. Similarly, the window of neuroplasticity that follows a journey isn't just a fascinating data point; it is the concrete rationale for why the quality of preparation and integration matters so much, and why timing is everything.
Pharmacology enters the curriculum through a harm reduction approach, not because you are pretending to be a pharmacist! Knowing how different compounds interact with receptor systems, medications, and individual physiology is essential, as is knowing when and how to refer a client to a specialist for further assessment.
Tradition, Harm Reduction, and Real-World Practice
The curriculum engages with Indigenous and ceremonial traditions as sophisticated, independent systems of knowledge. These lineages have been working with ritual, ceremonies, and non-ordinary states of consciousness for centuries. They carry practical wisdom about preparation, containment, social support and integration that clinical research is only beginning to catch up with. Students learn to approach these with genuine humility, to understand the difference between appreciation and appropriation, and to recognise the ongoing responsibility that comes with working in a field shaped, often without acknowledgement, by traditions that long predate modern science.
Harm reduction runs through the entire programme as both a core value and a practical skill set — not a checklist to complete before the 'real' work begins. While clinical trials and research evidence are vital, they represent only one part of a much broader landscape. Because approximately 96% of psychedelic experiences happen outside clinical or legal frameworks, practitioners must know how to adapt and integrate clinically derived best practices across highly varied, real-world environments.
A Cohort Built for Depth and Diversity
The Foundation Programme is designed for professionals who are ready to engage this field seriously — whatever their background. We welcome licensed clinicians, psychotherapists, and medical professionals alongside coaches, researchers, harm reduction workers, and community activists. This breadth is not incidental. The diversity of the cohort is itself part of the learning. By bringing together different professional scopes of practice, lived experiences, and ways of knowing we are creating a richness of dialogue that no single-discipline programme can replicate.
Whether your work sits in clinical practice, integration support, academic research, public health, or community care, the Foundation Programme gives you the interdisciplinary grounding to navigate this landscape with confidence, humility, and skill.
Five Anchors
of Inquiry
At Mirari, we challenge our students to be radically honest and transparent with themselves and each other. We all want to learn and grow, but first, we may need to recalibrate our underlying values and reframe our core beliefs. This requires starting with a clear understanding of who we are now — where our gaps and tensions exist, and what expectations are realistic to strive towards. This profound capacity to be open and stay open is perhaps the greatest skill a psychedelic practitioner can develop.
That's why we have developed our Five Anchor approach. With each anchor being both a field of knowledge and experience, as well as an inner-directed grounding in presence and accountability. Because they are all ever-present within us, we don't separate these anchors into modules or classes. All five anchors are continually and deliberately brought to the surface throughout every touchpoint within our programmes.
Join the programmeThe practitioner's own body is the primary instrument of this work. This anchor develops your capacity to track your own nervous system state, recognise non-verbal signals in others, and remain present under conditions of intensity and uncertainty. Through somatic practices, polyvagal-informed awareness, and ongoing self-inquiry, you build the embodied foundation that all relational and ethical practice depends on. This is not background work — it is the ground you stand on.
- Listening to bodily signals and tracking your own nervous system state
- Noticing client non-verbal cues and somatic activation patterns
- Refining sensitivity to self and other in real time
- Developing an ongoing personal practice of embodied self-awareness
- Recognizing how your own unresolved material manifests somatically — and how it directly shapes the client's experience and outcomes
Psychedelic experiences unfold within relationship. The quality of the relational container — the trust, attunement, and skill of the practitioner — shapes outcomes as much as the substance itself. This anchor develops your capacity to meet people where they are, across diverse settings, needs, and stages of the psychedelic process. Rather than anchoring to a single model, you build fluency across multiple evidence-informed relational frameworks so you can respond adaptively rather than rigidly.
- Applying structured communication tools across different stages, settings and scenarios
- Practising Cognitive Behavioral Coaching (CBC), Motivational Interviewing (MI), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Screening & Brief Intervention (SBI), Positive Psychology Interventions (PPI/PERMA), and Acceptance & Commitment Coaching (ACC)
- Developing relational presence and the capacity to hold space without directing
- Recognising and working with transference, dependency, and heightened relational vulnerability in altered states
- Supporting people through existential, spiritual, and transpersonal content that commonly surfaces in psychedelic experiences
No single framework is complete. Neuroscience can explain default mode network suppression but not the meaning a person makes of their experience. Transpersonal psychology holds maps of consciousness that pharmacology alone cannot draw. This anchor develops your ability to move between these knowledge systems with respectful care and humility - drawing on each without collapsing them into one another.
- Neuroscientific and pharmacological lineages: mechanisms of action, neuroplasticity windows, DMN disruption, and what these mean in practice
- Psychological lineages: psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, humanistic, and trauma-informed frameworks
- Transpersonal and existential lineages: maps of consciousness, mystical experience, ego dissolution, and the existential content that commonly surfaces in psychedelic states
- Indigenous and ceremonial traditions: sophisticated ontologies of healing and relationship rooted in paradigms that cannot be reduced to Western metrics
- Understanding that each lineage offers distinct insights and limitations — and that skillful practice means knowing when to apply a framework, when to step outside of it, and when to completely resist the urge to blend them
Ethics in psychedelic work is not a checklist — it is an ongoing practice of self-inquiry, accountability, and dynamic adjustment. People in altered states are in a condition of heightened openness and vulnerability. The practitioner's power in that context is real, and must be acknowledged during all stages of relational work. This anchor develops your capacity to recognise and navigate power dynamics, maintain appropriate boundaries, know the limits of your competence, and make decisions that consistently prioritise the wellbeing of the people you support.
- Recognising power dynamics and the elevated vulnerability of people in psychedelic states
- Practising ongoing ethical self-reflection as a professional obligation, not a one-time assessment
- Maintaining appropriate boundaries across dynamically evolving scenarios
- Identifying the limits of your knowledge and competence — and making referrals when needed
- Developing informed consent practices that are genuinely collaborative and person-centred, not merely procedural
Research consistently shows that the vast majority of psychedelic use occurs outside clinical or supervised settings — with studies suggesting that as few as 3% of people use psychedelics in clinical contexts and only 4.4% with a licensed therapist present. The gap between a controlled psilocybin RCT and a truffle retreat in the Netherlands, an underground ceremony, or a difficult solo experience is vast. It is precisely in that gap that practitioners need to be most skilled. This anchor grounds everything else in the messy, complex, authentic reality of how people actually use psychedelics. Harm reduction is not a safety net bolted onto the end of the curriculum — it runs through the entire programme as both a value and a real-world practical skillset.
- Translating clinical research and evidence-informed guidelines into the reality of your specific scope of practice
- Applying harm reduction principles across preparation, dosing, and integration
- Supporting people in complex and ambiguous real-world situations — where histories are complicated, settings are imperfect, and uncertainty requires diligence
- Responding to challenging experiences, integration difficulties, and extended adverse difficulties with ethical clarity and practical competence
- Recognising that real-world complexity is not a problem to be managed but the actual terrain of the work
Executive Director
David Drapkin, MSW, LCSW
Is a psychotherapist, clinical social worker, psychedelic educator, and course architect with more than 15 years of experience in mental health, addiction care, harm reduction, and psychedelic integration. He has served as Director of Education & Training at Psychedelics Today and was one of the creators of Vital, the 12-month professional psychedelic training programme.
David's work bridges clinical practice, curriculum design, and practitioner education. His therapeutic background includes psychodynamic therapy, CBT, IFS, psychoanalysis, somatic-informed mindfulness-based approaches, and transpersonal frameworks. As an educator, he emphasizes experiential learning, relational skill, ethical maturity, and the ability to navigate complexity rather than rely on simplistic answers.
As Programme Director of the Mirari Foundation Programme, David brings deep experience in building and teaching psychedelic education programmes. He ensures that the course functions as a coherent developmental pathway — integrating neuroscience, clinical research, somatics, ethics, harm reduction, cultural humility, and real-world application into one grounded and professionally relevant learning experience.
Course Consultants
Alex Belser, PhD
Is a clinical scientist, psychologist, and psychedelic researcher, formerly at NYU and Yale University. Dr. Belser explores the potential of psilocybin, DMT, ketamine, and MDMA therapies to alleviate human suffering. His book, EMBARK Psychedelic Therapy for Depression offers a clinical guide to working with psychedelic medicines and is published by Oxford University Press. He served as the Chief Clinical Officer of Cybin, leading clinical teams in the US and Europe. Dr. Belser has been a leader for LGBTQIA+ advocacy in psychedelic spaces, and his latest book is Queering Psychedelics: From Oppression to Liberation in Psychedelic Medicine.
As a Course Consultant, Alex brings deep expertise in clinical research, therapeutic frameworks, and the translation of psychedelic science into responsible practitioner education. His perspective supports the programme's commitment to clinical integrity, relational depth, cultural sensitivity, and evidence-informed psychedelic care.
Max Wolff, Dr. rer. nat.
Is a psychologist, psychotherapist, researcher, and one of Europe's leading voices in psychedelic therapy training. He has served as Head of Psychotherapy Training and Research at the MIND Foundation and directs its Augmented Psychotherapy Training programme. His research focuses on the psychological mechanisms and contextual conditions of psychedelic-assisted change, with a particular emphasis on making psychotherapy research applicable to psychedelic therapy practice.
As a Course Consultant, Max brings a rigorous European perspective on psychedelic therapist competencies, psychotherapy integration, training standards, and real-world clinical implementation. His involvement helps ensure that the Foundation Programme remains grounded in current research, professional competence, and the complex realities of psychedelic practice in European contexts.
Teaching Team (TBC)
To ensure a world-class educational experience, Mirari is assembling a multidisciplinary international faculty. Our roster includes leading minds from diverse fields who bring unparalleled depth and real-world expertise to every lecture and session.
(Please note that our faculty is currently being finalized; the list below represents our confirmed roster of prospective instructors [TBC]).
The Mirari Foundation Programme is built around a multidisciplinary faculty model. Rather than relying on a single school of thought, the programme brings together teachers from clinical practice, neuroscience, psychotherapy, harm reduction, somatics, ethics, cultural studies, policy, and real-world psychedelic care.
Our aim is to offer students direct access to practitioners, researchers, and educators who can translate complex knowledge into grounded, usable professional insight. Each faculty member is selected not only for their expertise, but for their ability to teach with clarity, hold a rigorous learning space, and connect their discipline to the broader realities of psychedelic-informed practice.
The faculty roster is currently being finalised. The list below represents confirmed and prospective instructors and may be updated as the programme develops.
Course Structure &
Educational Andragogy*
The Foundation Programme is designed as a multi-touchpoint learning experience. Rather than relying on passive lectures alone, the programme combines live teaching, self-study, peer practice, applied casework, skills simulation, and written integration. Each component has a distinct purpose, and together they create a structured rhythm of learning, practice, reflection, and professional development across the 12-week arc.
Our programme moves far beyond passive lectures. We implement an advanced, evidence-informed adult learning andragogy designed to build robust trans-theoretical skills and cognitive flexibility. By utilizing a hybrid model of asynchronous lectures and masterclasses, live group classes, and live relational simulations — utilizing both dyad and triad case studies — students learn to translate complex theory into adaptable real-world competencies
* But first - what does Andragogy mean?
Andragogy is the science and practice of adult learning. Unlike traditional pedagogic schooling - which relies on passive memorization and repetition - our cutting-edge andragogic approach respects you as an active partner in your own education.
We design our courses around five core andragogical educational pillars:
- Foundational skill building: Our focus is entirely on high-impact, relational skills grounded in deep self-awareness and simulated practice with peers.
- Self-Direction: You take ownership of your learning journey.
- Experience-Driven: We build directly on the unique professional and personal knowledge you already possess.
- Immediate Relevance: You learn through real-world problem-solving, not just theory.
- Internal Motivation: Your growth is driven by your own personal and career goals.
In short: We don't just teach you; we collaborate with you to unlock your full potential
The weekly live group class is the central supervised learning space of the programme. These sessions bring the cohort together with faculty to deepen the week's core themes, clarify complex material, and explore how concepts apply to real-world psychedelic practice. Classes include facilitated discussion, case-based inquiry, ethical reflection, and guided integration of the asynchronous lectures. Rather than simply repeating the pre-recorded content, live classes help students test ideas, ask questions, compare perspectives, and develop the relational and critical thinking skills required for interdisciplinary practice.
Each week, students watch an asynchronous masterclass lecture before the live group class. These lectures provide the conceptual foundation for the week's learning, introducing key scientific, clinical, ethical, cultural, and practical frameworks. The asynchronous format allows students to engage with complex material at their own pace, revisit important sections, and arrive at the live session prepared for deeper discussion. This ensures that live teaching time can be used for synthesis, application, and dialogue rather than basic content delivery.
The Avatar Learning Model is the programme's core applied case-study method. Each student works with a longitudinal avatar: a realistic client or practitioner-facing case profile that develops across the course. Every week, students apply the curriculum to this evolving avatar, considering questions of screening, preparation, ethics, somatic signals, crisis response, integration, scope of practice, and referral. In peer-based triad sessions, students use their chosen avatars for structured discussion and role-play, allowing abstract concepts to become practical decision-making skills. This model helps students learn how to think dynamically across time, rather than treating psychedelic support as a series of disconnected interventions.
Designed for all practitioners regardless of licensure, our Skills Labs offer six evidence-informed sessions focused on building essential, real-world competencies. Students move beyond intellectual learning through hands-on simulations, feedback, and structured coaching frameworks like MI and CBT. To integrate this knowledge, the feature combines written coursework with practical, informal exercises to be practiced with friends, family, or colleagues using custom activity sheets.
This Skill Lab introduces students to the foundations of Cognitive Behavioral Coaching as a practical, goal-oriented approach for supporting reflection, self-awareness, and behavioral change. Students explore how thoughts, emotions, and behaviors interact, and practice basic coaching tools that can help clients identify patterns, clarify goals, and develop more adaptive responses. The lab is designed as an introductory experience that complements students' existing work with clients rather than replacing formal CBT training.
This Skill Lab introduces students to basic principles of screening and brief intervention, with a focus on identifying potential risks, needs, and appropriate next steps in client-facing work. Students practice asking structured, respectful questions, recognizing red flags, and offering brief, supportive interventions within their scope of practice. Additionally, students will learn how to navigate seamless warm handoffs and connect clients to specialized external resources when needs exceed their current scope of practice. The aim is to build confidence in early-stage assessment conversations while reinforcing ethical boundaries, referral awareness, and client safety.
This Skill Lab introduces students to the spirit and core skills of Motivational Interviewing as a client-centered approach for supporting ambivalence, readiness, and change. Students practice foundational MI techniques such as open questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summarizing. The session emphasizes how these skills can strengthen collaborative conversations with clients, especially when working with motivation, uncertainty, preparation, or integration.
This Skill Lab introduces students to key principles of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and its relevance for nervous system awareness, emotional regulation, and present-moment attention. Students explore simple mindfulness-based practices that can support grounding, self-observation, and stress reduction. The lab offers a basic experiential foundation that students can integrate thoughtfully into their existing client work, while remaining aware of scope, context, and individual differences.
This Skill Lab introduces students to Acceptance & Commitment Coaching as an approach that supports values-based action, psychological flexibility, and a more skillful relationship with difficult internal experiences. Students explore introductory tools related to values clarification, acceptance, cognitive defusion, and committed action. The focus is on practical, accessible methods that can complement client work by helping people move toward meaningful goals even in the presence of discomfort or uncertainty.
This Skill Lab introduces students to Positive Psychology Interventions through the PERMA model: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Students explore how these domains can be used to support wellbeing, resilience, and post-experience integration. The lab offers practical introductory exercises that can complement existing client work by helping clients identify strengths, build resources, and translate insights into sustainable life practices.
Private study gives students time to deepen and broaden their learning through the curated resource list. This may include academic papers, clinical guidelines, book chapters, policy materials, interviews, or reflective essays. The aim is to help students build intellectual depth while also learning how to navigate the wider field responsibly. Because psychedelic practice draws from many disciplines, private study encourages students to develop their own informed perspective across science, therapy, ethics, culture, harm reduction, and lived experience.
Together, these touchpoints create a coherent weekly rhythm: students first encounter key ideas through asynchronous learning and private study, then explore them in supervised live discussion, apply them through avatar-based practice and skills labs, and finally consolidate them through written reflection. This structure supports the development of interdisciplinary knowledge, embodied awareness, relational skill, ethical clarity, and practical confidence.
The 12-Week Curriculum Matrix
The Foundation Programme follows a carefully sequenced 12-week learning arc, designed not as a series of standalone topics but as a progressive development of practitioner identity, judgment, and skill. Throughout, the curriculum continuously returns to the programme's five anchors — embodied self-awareness, relational skill, pluralistic lineages and ways of knowing, ethical posture, and real-world application. Weaving them through every week rather than treating them as separate subjects.
The structure below offers a high-level view of the course trajectory while preserving the depth and unique design of the full curriculum. *(Curriculum content, scheduling, and module sequences are subject to modification at any time without prior notice)
PHASE 1, Weeks 1–4: The Landscape, The Science & The Self
Before you can support others, you need to know where you stand. The opening phase builds your intellectual, ethical, and personal foundation — mapping the field you're entering, the science underneath it, and the practitioner you're becoming.
A panoramic introduction to the contemporary psychedelic-assisted therapy field — its history, its current forms, its legal realities across European jurisdictions, and the diverse professionals entering it. Equally important: where you locate yourself within it. You'll examine your own ontology, biases, and motivations as professional variables from day one.
- Distinguish the three major approaches to substance-assisted psychotherapy — psycholytic, psychedelic, and MDMA-assisted therapy — and identify the role of co-therapy within each
- Trace the historical arc of psychedelic research from Indigenous traditions through prohibition to the contemporary clinical renaissance
- Identify and critically analyse the risk of psychedelic exceptionalism — the tendency to suspend established clinical norms — and how it can distort your own practice
- Articulate your own ontological framework and its practical implications for how you'll work with clients
- Describe the practitioner's inner landscape as a clinical and ethical variable requiring active, ongoing attention from the outset of training
A rigorous but accessible deep-dive into how psychedelics actually work — in the brain, in the body, and in the therapeutic relationship. You'll develop working knowledge of pharmacology, neurobiological models, and twelve evidence-based mechanisms of therapeutic change that will thread through every subsequent week of the programme.
- Explain the primary mechanisms of action of classic psychedelics (5-HT2A agonism, DMN disruption, ReBUS model) and MDMA, and connect these directly to clinical outcomes
- Introduce and map at least four of the twelve mechanisms of therapeutic change — including psychological flexibility, ego dissolution, emotional processing, and meaning-making — to the pharmacological evidence base
- Explain the Affective-Cognitive dimension: how cognitive reappraisal, emotional regulation, and core belief shifts operate specifically during altered states
- Describe the Existential-Spiritual dimension as a structured clinical framework for the spiritual and existential content that commonly surfaces in sessions
- Identify basic contraindications, drug interactions, and somatic complications for each major substance class
- Engage with Indigenous and ceremonial frameworks as autonomous healing traditions with their own epistemological validity — not as explanatory tools for Western clinical outcomes
This week moves beyond awareness into action. Using your Avatar Case Study as the laboratory, you'll develop practical frameworks for culturally responsive practice — learning to accurately and ethically incorporate intersectional identity, trauma history, and social determinants of health into everything you do as a practitioner.
- Analyse at least three intersecting social determinants shaping your Avatar Case Study client's relationship to healing and to psychedelic-assisted treatment
- Apply Trauma-Informed Care as a cornerstone of practice: identify trauma history indicators and re-traumatisation risk
- Engage with Indigenous healing frameworks as autonomous epistemological systems — critically examining the assumptions embedded in Western PAT models without appropriation or reduction
- Reflect honestly on how your own intersectional identity — including unresolved psychological material — creates resonances, limitations, and tensions when working with specific client profiles
- Apply SERT-responsive facilitation: recognise and respond to the spiritual, existential, religious, and theological dimensions of diverse clients
Ethical practice is not a module you complete and move on from — it is the frame within which all other skills operate. This week develops your capacity to identify boundary issues, recognise power dynamics, and define your scope of practice with clarity and humility.
- Apply a rigorous ethical framework to practice scenarios covering power dynamics, touch protocols, and vulnerable populations
- Articulate the full informed consent framework — ongoing-process model, capacity-sensitivity, six-form touch taxonomy — with the understanding that practical facilitation is practised in Week 6
- Examine how unexamined practitioner inner material constitutes a specific ethical risk of harm in the therapeutic relationship — not merely a developmental concern
- Articulate your scope of practice and the ethical obligation to refer beyond it — whether you are a licensed clinician or a wellness coach
PHASE 2, Weeks 5–7: From First Contact to the Realtime Support
Effective gatekeeping is one of the most important acts of care in this work. You'll learn to conduct thorough, trauma-informed intake assessments, weigh risk-benefit ratios across complex presentations, and have honest, compassionate conversations when psychedelics may be contraindicated or may not be right for a specific person.
- Conduct a systematic screening interview covering scope specific domains, including, biopsychosocial, relational, motivational, and spiritual domains
- Begin drafting a working case formulation for your Avatar Case Study, integrating screening information into a coherent arc
- Demonstrate how the therapeutic alliance begins at first contact — establishing the pre-session phase of the practitioner-client relationship arc
- Communicate a contraindication or deferral decision using Motivational Interviewing principles with cultural sensitivity and compassionate directness
- Scope-differentiation activity: compare how a licensed clinician and a wellness coach conduct the same screening conversation — what differs, and what remains constant across both roles
Preparation is the invisible architecture that heavily influences a person's psychedelic experience. This week you'll learn to design and provide comprehensive preparation sessions — applying therapeutic frameworks, consent skills, somatic tools, and interactive music selection that together support the conditions for meaningful, safe psychedelic experiences.
- Design a trauma-informed preparation session protocol for your Avatar Case Study: identify trauma indicators, adapt your approach, and anticipate how trauma material may surface during the dosing session
- Facilitate the informed consent conversation in practice: demonstrate relational skill, cultural sensitivity, and trauma-informed framing
- Teach a client two mindfulness-based coping strategies for challenging in-session experiences — breath-awareness and mindful acceptance
- Introduce a client to at least one body-awareness practice as somatic preparation for the physical dimension of the psychedelic experience
- Map at least four of the twelve mechanisms of therapeutic change to your preparation session design — and explain which mechanisms fall within your scope of practice
- Apply the psychedelic exceptionalism lens to preparation: identify where exceptionalist assumptions distort intention-setting or create unrealistic client expectations
The core craft of this work. This is where all six clinical dimensions — existential-spiritual, mindfulness, somatic, affective-cognitive, relational, and momentum — come together in real time, in the most demanding context a practitioner will encounter. Working from your individual case formulation, you'll learn to be present without directing, to support without interfering, and to trust the process without abandoning the person.
- Navigate an existential or spiritual content moment by using existential inquiry without spiritual bypassing, role confusion, or importing your own spiritual worldview
- Demonstrate in-session mindfulness facilitation: guide a client to lean into difficult material while maintaining your own regulated, grounded presence throughout
- Track and respond to somatic cues during a simulated session: use body-awareness as an instrument of attunement and relational co-regulation
- Identify and respond to an Affective-Cognitive activation: facilitate emotional processing, cognitive reappraisal, or core belief surfacing using tools practices in the Skills Labs
- Apply microsignal awareness: consciously track and manage your own verbal, paraverbal, and non-verbal behaviour during a simulated session
- Examine how unresolved practitioner psychological material can become a live safety risk in session — and identify one concrete area of personal development this reveals
- Scope-differentiation activity: navigate the same in-session choice point from the perspectives of a licensed clinician and a wellness coach, identifying what each role demands
PHASE 3, Weeks 8–10: Challenging Experiences, Integration & Professional Readiness
The third phase addresses what happens when things don't go smoothly — and what happens when they do. You'll develop crisis response skills, practice the art of integration, and begin the honest professional self-assessment that will define your practice.
Difficult experiences during psychedelic sessions are not failures — but they demand specific, trained competencies. This week introduces a foundational clinical decision framework that resolves one of the most dangerous sources of confusion in the field: the difference between a challenging in-session experience and a persisting adverse effect. Getting this distinction wrong causes harm.
- Apply the challenging experience vs. persisting adverse effect decision framework: correctly classify three presented scenarios and identify the appropriate response pathway for each
- Classify the full spectrum of difficult psychedelic experiences, clearly distinguishing potentially beneficial challenging experiences from psychologically harmful adverse events
- Apply Trauma-Informed Care to crisis de-escalation
- Apply the Mindful Consumption and Benefit Maximisation framework to your Avatar Case Study — including harm reduction guidance for clients who pursue unsupervised use
- Apply the psychedelic exceptionalism lens to harm reduction: identify where exceptionalist thinking leads practitioners to minimise genuine adverse effects, or avoid escalation
Without integration, insights fade. This week explores the theoretical foundations and practical tools of integration work — from narrative sequencing and somatic approaches to meaning-making, relational integration, Keeping Momentum, and the active maintenance of therapeutic gains over time.
- Apply narrative-first sequencing: construct a phenomenologically rich, descriptive session narrative before moving to interpretation
- Design a Keeping Momentum plan for your Avatar Case Study: identify specific behavioural activation steps, meaning consolidation activities, and integration stalling prevention strategies
- Demonstrate at least three of the five evidence-based integration modalities — remembering, social sharing, exploring, structuring, and practising — in a 20-minute session
- Apply at least two somatic integration techniques to a post-session experience: breath, movement, body mapping, or somatic marker tracking
- Map at least four of the twelve mechanisms of therapeutic change to your integration session design, identifying which mechanisms you are actively reinforcing
- Apply the psychedelic exceptionalism lens to integration: identify where exceptionalist narratives distort integration conversations or pressure clients toward particular interpretations of their experience
The final teaching week faces in two directions at once: outward toward the European regulatory landscape and the professional pathways available to graduates, and inward toward an honest gap analysis and a concrete post-course development plan. Completing this programme is a beginning, not a qualification for independent practice — and this week gives you a clear-eyed map of what comes next.
- Complete a professional readiness self-assessment against the course's competency framework, and clearly name your most significant current growth edges
- Articulate what the post-course practice-readiness gap means for your specific professional pathway — including the need for CPD, supervision and peer support
- Identify at least three signs of vicarious trauma and burnout in yourself and describe a concrete, personalised self-care plan
- Prepare your Capstone: complete your Avatar Case Study summary and draft your 90-Day Commitment to Action
PHASE 4, Weeks 11–12: Capstone Presentations & Ongoing Professional Development
The closing phase is not an ending — it's a launch. Capstone presentations bring together ten weeks of applied casework, personal development, and professional growth into a coherent, public demonstration of who you've become and where you're headed.
The first of two Capstone presentation sessions. You'll present your Avatar Case Study journey to the cohort — showing how a single client profile became a ten-week vehicle for applied clinical learning — alongside a Reflective Portfolio Review of your three most significant personal and professional growth takeaways, and a 90-Day Commitment to Action that makes your next steps concrete and measurable.
The cohort closes with an appreciation circle and a grounding ritual — a deliberate, meaningful ending to what is, for many, a significant personal and professional experience.
- Deliver a 5-minute Avatar Case Study Capstone Presentation: trace your client's journey across the ten weeks and articulate what you learned about working with this specific profile
- Deliver a 3-minute Reflective Portfolio Review: identify your three most significant internal growth and professional evolution takeaways from the programme
- Deliver a 2-minute 90-Day Commitment to Action: present three specific, measurable professional development commitments for the next 90 days
- Present your Individualised Development Plan (IDP) as a structured, forward-looking component of your Capstone
- Receive structured peer and faculty feedback grounded in the programme's 12-outcome competency framework — and integrate that feedback into your professional self-understanding
- Optionally complete a 1,000-word Course Reflection Essay to deepen your written self-reflective practice beyond the Capstone format
Is This Programme
For You?
The psychedelic field in Europe is developing quickly. Regulatory frameworks are shifting, clinical applications are expanding, and new professional roles are emerging across healthcare, research, policy, and community practice. For practitioners who are prepared, this represents a genuine opportunity to contribute to one of the most significant developments in mental health in generations.
The Foundation Programme is designed for people who are ready to meet that moment with seriousness, humility, and sustained commitment. It is not a passive course — it asks for active participation, honest self-reflection, and a willingness to have your existing assumptions challenged.
It may be right for you if you are:
A mental health professional or clinician
— psychologist, psychiatrist, or licensed therapist — looking to build foundational knowledge across the interdisciplinary landscape of psychedelic-assisted care
A coach or wellness practitioner
— experienced in non-clinical support — looking to deepen your somatic, relational, and integration skills within a structured, evidence-informed framework
A researcher, policy professional, or educator
seeking a grounded, European-contextualised overview of the field
A professional considering a move into this space
who wants to understand it rigorously before committing further
You do not need to be a licensed clinician to apply. You do need to be able to demonstrate maturity, ethical awareness, and genuine commitment to responsible engagement with complex material.
Timeline
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June 3, 2026
Enrollment Opens
Applications and enrollment for the Foundation Programme officially open
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June 8 - July 23, 2026
Early Bird Enrollment Period
A 25% tuition discount applies to enrollments completed during this period
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July 24 - September 8, 2026
Regular Enrollment Period
Enrollment continues at the standard programme price.
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September 8, 2026
Enrollment Closes
Final day to apply and secure a place in the cohort.
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September 22, 2026
Programme Begins
The Foundation Programme officially starts, and runs for 12 consecutive weeks
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December 15, 2026
Programme Completion
The cohort completes the Foundation Programme.
FAQ
We understand that circumstances change. If you withdraw before the programme begins, you may be eligible for a partial or full refund in accordance with our refund policy. Once the programme has started, refunds may be limited — your place in the cohort, faculty access, and learning resources will already have been allocated. For specific terms, please contact our admissions team before enrolling.
The Foundation Programme welcomes a diverse range of professionals and serious learners with an interest in psychedelic studies, harm reduction, integration, and interdisciplinary practice. This includes mental health professionals, medical professionals, coaches, wellness practitioners, researchers, educators, policy professionals, community workers, and others with a genuine commitment to the field.
You do not need to be a licensed clinician. We do expect applicants to demonstrate maturity, ethical awareness, and readiness to engage responsibly with complex material.
On successful completion you will receive a certificate confirming your participation in and completion of the Foundation Programme in Interdisciplinary Psychedelic Studies & Practice.
The certificate demonstrates that you have completed a structured educational programme covering foundational knowledge, ethics, harm reduction, interdisciplinary perspectives, peer practice, and reflective learning. It may support your professional development, strengthen your understanding of the field, and help you communicate your training background to employers, collaborators, or future educational programmes.
No. The Foundation Programme does not qualify you to become a psychedelic therapist, prescribe substances, provide psychedelic-assisted therapy, or work outside your existing professional scope of practice. It is an educational and professional development programme — designed to build foundational knowledge, ethical clarity, and practical understanding. It does not replace clinical licensure, medical training, psychotherapy training, supervision, or any legally required qualification. Students are responsible for understanding and complying with the laws and professional requirements in their own jurisdiction.
Not automatically. Completing the Foundation Programme may deepen your understanding of ketamine-assisted care, harm reduction, preparation, integration, ethics, and interdisciplinary practice. However, eligibility to work in a ketamine clinic depends on your existing qualifications, professional licence, clinical experience, local regulations, and the requirements of the clinic itself. Clinical roles typically require medical, nursing, or psychotherapy credentials. Non-clinical roles have different requirements, but must remain within legal and ethical boundaries. The certificate supports your professional development — it does not guarantee employment eligibility.
This depends entirely on your jurisdiction, your existing professional background, and the legal status of the substances involved. The Foundation Programme does not confer any legal authorisation to facilitate psychedelic experiences. In most European jurisdictions, facilitation of sessions involving scheduled substances remains legally restricted regardless of training completed.
What the programme does provide is a rigorous grounding in scope of practice, ethics, harm reduction, and the regulatory landscape — so you can make well-informed decisions about what is legally and ethically available to you in your specific context. We encourage all students to seek independent legal advice relevant to their country of practice before offering any client-facing services in this space.
Yes. The programme is intentionally interdisciplinary and welcomes both licensed and non-licensed participants. Non-clinicians will gain a strong foundation in ethics, harm reduction, integration, community care, and responsible scope of practice — including clear guidance on where clinical referral, supervision, or additional training is required.
Existing clinical training was not designed with psychedelic-assisted practice in mind. The pharmacology, altered-state ethics, preparation and integration frameworks, and European regulatory landscape are largely absent from standard medical, psychiatric, and psychotherapy training. This programme provides structured grounding in that territory, alongside the opportunity to examine assumptions and build a clearer picture of where existing skills translate — and where further development is needed.
No. This is a foundational educational programme. It provides a rigorous introduction to psychedelic studies and practice, but does not certify participants as therapists, clinicians, prescribers, or medical providers. Clinical practice requires additional professional training, licensure, supervision, and compliance with local laws and regulations.
Tuition / Scholarships / Early Bird
Tuition
The tuition fee for the Foundation Programme is €1,950.
Flexible payment options are generally facilitated for participants via Klarna, our third-party payment processing partner. It is important to note that Mirari does not oversee the availability of these plans for individual students, nor do we establish the underlying terms, criteria for approval, repayment structures, or associated fees. Such arrangements are administered exclusively by Klarna and are subject to their internal assessment protocols, which often depend on a student's specific jurisdiction and individual eligibility profile.
Early Bird
A 25% Early Bird discount is available to students who enrol during the Early Bird period (3 June – 23 July 2026), bringing the programme fee to Round to 1,450 Euro. Early Bird places are limited and allocated in order of completed enrolment.
Are scholarships available?
Yes, a limited number of scholarship places are available for applicants who need them.
Before applying for a scholarship, we'd encourage you to review the full range of payment options — including our 25% Early Bird discount and flexible payment plans — as these may make the programme accessible without the need for additional support.
Scholarships are considered after conditional acceptance to the programme. This means completing the standard admissions process first. Once conditionally accepted, eligible applicants can submit a short scholarship application covering their financial context, professional situation, and how the programme connects to their work. No supporting financial documentation is required, but applicants will be asked to confirm the accuracy of the information provided.
Decisions are communicated within 14 working days. Approved applicants receive a time-sensitive scholarship code to apply at checkout. If a scholarship application is unsuccessful, our payment plan remains available as an alternative.
Places are confirmed only once payment or scholarship approval is complete.
Contact Details
To apply for the programme or book a call with the Programme Director to ask any questions, please share your contact information with us in the form: