Introducing The Spiral Model
A Framework for Community Integrated Psychedelic Healing
In building The Flying Sage community over the past three years, one question has been consistently guiding our work…
How can communities support the intentional use of psychedelics?
In 2024, The Flying Sage hosted over 200 in-person events here in Vancouver. Most of these were transformational in nature and included breathwork ceremonies, cold plunges, sound baths, meditations and other somatic practices.
Other events focussed on education and connection like our integration circles, expansion seminars and masterminds.
Over the years, I have noticed several key themes emerging that I believe can be supportive in helping other communities around the world not only integrate psychedelics in a safe, healthy and effective way, but also help to ensure psychedelics remain accessible as the industry evolves.
The following six themes form the basis for what I would like to call the Spiral Model for community integrated psychedelic use.
The Spiral Model - Context
Why Spiral?
Before we dive into the details…why name it spiral?
The word spiral comes from the Latin "spira", meaning a coil or twist, which itself comes from the Greek "speira", meaning a winding or curve. It’s often associated with motion, growth, and cycles—patterns that don’t repeat in a linear way but evolve with each loop.
I’ve found the spiral to be a useful metaphor in capturing the nature and essence of intentional psychedelic use because it captures the cyclical essence of integration and highlights how oftentimes, our path of growth does not follow a linear path.
Instead, the transformational path invites us to consistently revisit similar themes in our lifetime… but with ever expanding and maturing awareness.
A Model With Purpose
While medicalization and legalization are important, they are not the only path of access for psychedelics.
This model is meant to describe one possible way psychedelics can be intentionally used in community settings - specifically in the context of urban environments.
Big cities are bustling epicentres of our modern world that possess incredible arrays of human ingenuity, creativity and progress.
At the same time, cities are increasingly characterized by a surging rate of loneliness and a pace of life that is contributing to the mental health crisis we are witnessing.
Larger cities are also where a lot of people happen to already be accessing psychedelics… both in underground and aboveground markets.
If you are interested in more context as to why I created the Spiral Model, it is a partial answer to some of the concerns and questions I raised in the following article I wrote back in 2023…
Now, grab a cup of tea, put your feet up, and let’s dive in…
The Spiral Model - Overview
The Spiral framework is comprised of six different parts. They are not ordered chronologically or linearly.
Instead, these pieces circle around and around… kind of like a spiral.
The six different parts of the model are…
Service - Preparation - Integration - Ritual - Access - Liminal
The Spiral Model - Breakdown
1. Service
Let’s start with some groundwork.
What belief systems and philosophies should psychedelics be embedded in? Should they be couched in any philosophy at all?
In the last few decades, since the 70s, psychedelics have been very counter-culture and many psychedelic luminaries played a part in writing this narrative.
Notably, Terence McKenna taught the importance of trusting the “primacy of direct experience” as our greatest teacher and to denounce culture1 .
In a similar vein, Timothy Leary famously said “turn on, tune in and drop out”.
While these might have been inspiring slogans in the 1960s, I don’t think they resonate as much today.
Although some dose of counter-culture is probably there for good reason, I think it is important that we introduce some new cultural groundwork because the counter-culture rhetoric has led us into the post-prohibition failure we find ourselves in now.
Psychedelics are tools for connection and it is with this fundamental assumption that I like to place the concept of being of service as a foundation for intentional work with psychedelics. As much as the counter-culture movement tells us to turn away from society, I think doing so robs psychedelics of one of their integral purposes.
Service in this context is a helpful reminder that it’s not all about us as individuals and that these powerful altered states can actually be directed to others.
Western growth is focussed a lot on personal development and something beautiful about psychedelics is their natural ability to direct us towards the collective as well.
But this doesn’t just happen automatically. You have to give direction to your growth with psychedelics.
Effectively integrating psychedelics into community means recognizing them not as “anti-social crazy pills”, but as pro-social medicines. When used in community settings, I believe psychedelics can help us be of service to something greater than ourselves… whether that be our family, our neighbors, our friends, the planet, the universe, God or a metaphysical combination of all of these.
2. Preparation
With some philosophical anchors laid to help orient our experiences with psychedelics, the next step in the framework is preparation; a simple concept but one that has historically been missing from the conversation.
I would wager that 99% of “bad trips” (which I define here as trips that have lasting negative physical or psychological impacts) come down to a poor set of decisions that were made around set, setting or dose.
In other words, the primary reason bad trips happen is because proper attention to one’s mindset (mental space), the environment (physical space) and the dosage is absent or misguided.
This is where community comes in.
Not only can psychedelic communities support in educating about what proper set and setting looks like, they can also be great settings in of themselves by providing safe containers for people to engage with psychedelics.
This is also where other modalities such as breathwork and cold exposure can also be really supportive in helping our nervous systems prepare for these powerful experiences and it should be emphasized that oftentimes, these modalities can be great stepping stones towards larger dose experiences with psychedelics.
Oftentimes the transformation people are looking for in psychedelics can be achieved with something as simple as our breath.
Finally, the preparation phase is also where we have the opportunity to start fostering intention which is another critical component of community integrated psychedelic use.
3. Integration
Just as preparing for our psychedelic experiences is critical, it is also very important that we integrate them afterwards.
Integration is defined here as the process by which the material accessed and insights gained in an experience are incorporated over time into one’s life in a way that benefits the individual and their community.
Oftentimes, what separates recreational experiences from therapeutic and transformational ones is the integration process.
Proper integration is the difference between a fleeting high and an embodied journey.
Coming back to the inspiration of the spiral metaphor, oftentimes our integration process presents us with reoccurring triggers and circumstances which serve as constant opportunities to reflect and deepen on our journey of growth.
Focussing on integration also means that larger doses are used sparingly throughout the year to make space for this process to happen. It’s difficult to integrate anything when one is chasing one peak after the other.
4. Ritual
Rituals have always played an important role in human culture and in communities since the start of time. They create containers for transformation, marking the transition between one state of being and another.
”Rituals are the shared experiences that keep a community together”.2
In the context of psychedelic community, rituals serve a similar function—they help frame the experience as meaningful, intentional and sacred.
Without ritual, it is easy for psychedelic use to slip into destructive or abusive patterns.
Inviting ritual in psychedelic community does not always have to look like taking large doses. In fact, one of the main components I want to highlight as part of the Spiral Framework is the power of microdosing ceremonies.
Oftentimes we think that ritual and psychedelics are paired only when working with high doses, but I would argue that communities can serve a critical function by offering low-dose experiences that help people feel safe and dip their toes into what can sometimes be quite a daunting endeavour.
Whether it be with micro or macro doses, ritual is important because it helps people invite reverence and reflection into their experience.
As well, ritual does not have to be religious or even spiritual in nature. What matters most is that it's intentional. Whether it's lighting a candle, opening space with a song, or closing a ceremony with a sharing circle, these small acts of ritual can go a long way in shaping the depth of one’s experience and also strengthening the bond and cohesion of a community.
When rituals are done in community, they reinforce the idea that we are not alone in our healing journeys.
5. Access
Accessibility is a non-negotiable pillar of a truly community-integrated psychedelic culture.
Psychedelics, in their potential to catalyze healing and transformation, must not become yet another privilege only available to the few. If we are truly democratizing transcendence, we need to create entry points for everyone—regardless of income, identity or prior experience.
In the Spiral Model, accessibility means offering a variety of ways people can engage with psychedelic healing: from microdosing ceremonies and peer-led integration groups to referrals for professional guides and integration support. It also means destigmatizing simple approaches—like tripping with a trusted friend in nature or journeying with a small group of friends at home.
From a political and advocacy standpoint, this is where it is also important to mention the significance of decriminalization.
“The push for a purely medicalized or legalized model without first ensuring decriminalization is not only unethical but also exclusionary, hypocritical, and self-serving.”3
6. Liminal
The last piece of the framework is the liminal.
The word liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. It refers to the space between—neither here nor there, where one thing has ended and the next has not yet begun.
Psychedelics are not the end goal. They are portals—gateways into the unknown, the in-between, the mystery.
In traditional rites of passage, the liminal phase is the space between the old identity and the new one, and it is often marked by uncertainty, surrender, and disorientation.
Psychedelics, when used intentionally, drop us into this liminal space. They dissolve boundaries, deconstruct identities, and open up new ways of seeing ourselves and the world.
But just as important as entering the liminal is learning how to come back.
This is why community is so essential—because it gives us a place to land.
I know from first hand experience how important that is because I did not have a landing place when I was exploring with psychedelics myself back in my early 20s. I had to learn what integration was the hard way and honestly, I probably spent too much time in an exploring phase versus an integrating phase.
This final piece of the Spiral Model reminds us that psychedelic use is not about escaping life but about deepening our relationship to it.
The liminal is powerful precisely because it is temporary. It is the place where transformation becomes possible—but it is not where we are meant to live.
Integration, service, and continued engagement with our communities are how we anchor what we learn there.
The spiral loops us back, again and again—not to the same place, but to a deeper layer of knowing.
When enough people in a community have gone into their depths with psychedelics, the community itself emerges as a force for healing - the network becomes something far greater than the individuals comprising it.
It is through this community integrated framework that I believe a new culture of psychedelic healing can emerge—one rooted in accessibility, vulnerability and integrity.
I hope you find some meaning in this model and and that it is a useful framework to guide your own personal exploration with psychedelics. Additionally, if you are a psychedelic community builder, I hope this model supports the growth of your initiatives.
To conclude, I am reminded of a song that was shared with me at last year’s Canadian Psychedelic Summit.
“And the spiral spins round and round and love is increasing,
And the spiral spins round and round, and love’s never ceasing.”- Vanessa LeBourdais
Farewell Until Next Time
Thank you for being here and for tuning in (and hopefully not dropping out).
I hope this framework proves useful to some of you out there - especially if you are on the start of your journey with mind expanding medicines or if you are building community yourself.
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With psychedelic love and gratitude,
- Michael 🤍
