I’ve struggled for several years with knowing what integration is and understanding it. I first started hearing the term while attending Ayahuasca ceremonies, but it was never really explained. Sometimes it felt like a buzzword that was tossed around, but it was clearly something expansive and important, yet vague. 

Integration after Ayahuasca is considered essential. It’s often described as where the real work begins – taking what you experienced in ceremony and bringing it into your life. Just before beginning my breathwork training, I returned to Ayahuasca several times and was starting to grasp what integration was, but I still wouldn’t have been able to explain it clearly if someone had asked me. In breathwork, integration is also emphasized. Which makes sense, given that these modalities open the door to non-ordinary states of consciousness and deep internal shifts.

I began to understand integration more through my breathwork facilitator training and through books like Holotropic Breathwork by Stanislav and Cristina Grof. These helped bring some clarity, but I also started forming my own understanding. Partly so I could explain it to others, but mostly so I could understand it myself.

Here are some definitions that resonated most with me:

• Integration, in the context of breathwork, is the process of assimilating profound physical, emotional, and spiritual insights into daily life. It’s turning experiences from sessions into lasting change and making sense of what arose. It’s the bridge that grounds deep experiences so they don’t become overwhelming or forgotten, allowing for real transformation through shifts in thoughts, behaviors, and relationships.
• At its simplest, integration is your system absorbing change so it becomes natural, stable, and usable. It becomes not just something you experienced, but something you can now live from.

While these definitions helped my understanding even more, they still felt like a one-dimensional explanation of something that is inherently multi-dimensional. I’ve come to understand that integration is difficult to define because it can only be explained to a certain point. To truly understand it, it has to be experienced, and that understanding continues to evolve the more you engage with it.

At one point in my breathwork journey, something began to click. I started to see that when we engage in deep healing modalities that access non-ordinary states of consciousness, something within us shifts or moves. And when that happens, space is created in the system. That space doesn’t immediately get filled. It takes time for things to reorganize. To redistribute. To settle into a new internal order. And sometimes, the depth of the work determines how much time is needed. After longer breathwork journeys, I noticed that it could take about a week before I experienced noticeable shifts – new perspectives emerging, or long-standing struggles beginning to soften. That, to me, is integration.

Here’s a glimpse into one of my more intense integration experiences. The breathwork retreat and training intensive I attended as part of my facilitator training was the first healing retreat I had experienced outside of Ayahuasca. My integration afterward felt rocky and unexpectedly difficult. 

Coming out of the retreat, I felt incredible. The closest I had ever felt to my core self. Deeply connected to the people I shared the experience with, people who now feel like family. I felt intuitive, grounded, and less afraid. But I wasn’t ready to return to my everyday life. Especially not to a job I had already been feeling misaligned with for a long time.

Returning to that environment felt jarring. I couldn’t understand why. I had expected things to feel easier after such a profound experience, but instead, everything felt more intense. Eventually, I realized what was happening. Because of the inner work I had done, my tolerance for misalignment had decreased. My system was no longer willing to normalize what didn’t feel true. And that made returning to that job feel almost unbearable.

Over time, my threshold began to stabilize. I found a new rhythm. But in the beginning, it felt like everything had been turned up. There was also fear. I was afraid of losing the connection I had cultivated within myself. Afraid that going back into an environment where I had previously abandoned myself would undo the work I had done. It wasn’t entirely rational, but it was deeply understandable. 

One thing became very clear: I couldn’t go back to the way I had been living. 

Eventually, I realized that the changes I experienced weren’t fragile, they were permanent. But they required something new from me. They required that I stop abandoning myself. 

That final month at my job, and the period that followed, became an initiation into something deeper. I began exploring my energy rhythms, learning how my nervous system responded to different demands, and discovering how to work with myself instead of against myself.

Ultimately, what I’ve learned is that integration isn’t a step that happens after the work. It is a part of the work. The sessions, the ceremonies, the breakthroughs – they open the door. But integration is what allows you to walk through it and begin building a life on the other side.

And I’m still learning what that means. In the small choices, the moments of awareness, the ways I choose to respond differently than I once did. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to define – because it’s not something you understand all at once. It’s something you live into, over time.