Powerful experiences alone don’t create lasting change; what you do afterward does. Across recognised frameworks (preparation → session → integration), the post-experience phase is where insights are digested, organized, and enacted. Think of it as consolidating “state” into “trait.”

In practice, integration:

• Stabilizes the nervous system and helps regulate the intensity that can follow expanded states.

• Makes meaning of psychodynamic, biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal material—so it informs choices, boundaries, and values (a through-line in Grof-inspired maps and Integral perspectives).

• Builds habits and structures (sleep, movement, relationships, creativity, nature time, contemplative practice) that anchor insight in everyday life.

• Protects outcomes: studies and clinical programs consistently emphasize that psychotherapy before and after dosing is central to persisting benefits in depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance use, and existential distress.

• Repairs difficulties: when experiences are challenging, integration provides containment, pacing, and safe processing so the material becomes workable rather than overwhelming.