About Us

Music Assisted Psychedelic Support and Integration

MA-PSI (Music Assisted Psychedelic Support and Integration) is our unique methodology utilizing music therapy interventions for the preparation for and integration of psychedelic medicine experiences.

It encompasses an individualized set of practices designed to cultivate psychedelic listening, facilitate psychological insights, awaken musical intelligence, liberate self-expression, and create pathways that deepen one’s ability to hear the sounds and messages within and around them.

By drawing upon evidence-based music therapy interventions to address the deep encounters that characterize psychedelic work, MA-PSI provides a complementary framework for psychedelic-assisted therapies, somatic practices, talk-based psychotherapy, and skills-based models such as DBT and EMDR. It employs a wide range of theoretical orientations including trauma-informed, existential, IFS (Internal Family Systems), analytical, and transpersonal modalities while maintaining a music-centered focus.

Clinical music-assisted psychedelic support and integration practices we offer include:

  • Musical Identity Journeying

    Uncovering innate musical intelligence through a deep dive into the client’s musical autobiography

  • Sound Attunement

    Ear-hands-instrument-acoustic environment alignment (tuning musical instruments and creating psychoacoustic spaces as a practice of inner psychospiritual and somatic attunement)

  • Music-Assisted Rhythmic Breathing

    Non-metronomic, organic rhythmic breath work

  • Lyric Analysis and Song Exploration

    Using song themes to facilitate personal insights and opportunities for growth

  • Environmental Music Making

    Attuning to and with the present psychoacoustic environment

  • Psychodynamic Songwriting

    Summoning your utterly unique voice and finding your personal evolving “song to sing”

  • Psychoactive Field Recording

    Environmental recording practices to awaken a deeper connection to the world around and within you

  • Relational Musicking

    Group drumming, song-share circles, collaborative songwriting/composition/arranging/orchestrating/multitrack recording

  • Sound Bathing

    Music assisted relaxation, guided meditation, and sound healing experiences

JOSHUA PEARL, Music Therapist (MT-BC) and Psychedelic Integration Specialist

Joshua Pearl, MT-BC/L, is a clinical music therapist and conservatory trained pianist. Joshua worked for over 25 years as a record producer, composer/songwriter, music director for theater and dance, performer, community organizer, and musical mentor in Kyoto, Japan, New York City, Woodstock, NY, and Portland, Oregon before transitioning into the field of music therapy.

Joshua currently serves as the president of the Oregon Association for Music Therapy and runs a private music therapy practice.

As the founder of the Music Therapy Center for Psychedelic Integration, he provides one-to-one and group support to people who are interested in exploring healing through non-ordinary states of consciousness with the help of music-based practices and interventions designed for psychedelic preparation and integration. 

Personal Statement

One thing I have gleaned from my own struggles and successes in trying to live purposefully and feel “at home” in my body and place in the world, is that human potential cannot be constrained by a one-size-fits-all set of rules and roles. Each of us has a unique life curriculum to discover and pursue, sometimes supported by the rules and roles thrust upon us, and sometimes only developed in spite of them.

I have known music to help reveal both the uniquely personal and the transcendent universal aspects of ourselves, as well as to help us to communicate and connect with others and life all around us.

The Music-Assisted Psychedelic Support and Integration (MA-PSI) method I have developed is a meeting ground between my personal experience as an explorer of the fertile intersection of music and consciousness, and the theoretical orientation and clinical training I have received formally and experientially.

As a licensed clinical music therapist focused on psychedelic support and integration, I will help guide you to the musical experiences and ongoing practices that will provide deep and useful insights, including clarifying your intentions before a medicine journey, identifying the core issues at play in your inner life, and loosening and liberating your ability to express your deepest feelings and thoughts.

This process creates an increased sense of inner wholeness, which can help free you to explore your connection with yourself, the people in your life, and our connection to the interdependent fields of nature and the cosmos.

FAQs

  • We use music therapy methods to work with individuals and groups in preparation for psychedelic experiences, integration after psychedelic experiences, and provide general education about the therapeutic value of integrating non-ordinary states of consciousness with ordinary day to day life.

  • MA-PSI is for individuals interested in exploring how music and psychedelics can work together to maximize the therapeutic benefits of working with non-ordinary states of consciousness. Whether you are using psychedelic medicine for the first time, or if you have had previous psychedelic experiences, MA-PSI provides a process for unifying the therapeutic, creative, and spiritual dimensions inherent in psychedelic journeying.

  • You do not need to have any musical training or skill set to benefit from our services. We welcome anyone with a strong connection to music as a listener, a player (of any level of experience), or both.

  • Our integration clients come in having had psychedelic experiences with Psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, Ketamine, DMT, Cannabis, and Ayahuasca. We do not provide any of these medicines, nor do we facilitate medicine sessions or ceremonies.

  • We do not provide any form of psychedelic drugs, facilitate psychedelic-assisted therapy, work directly with psychedelic medicines, nor facilitate individual psychedelic journeys.

  • Our program for training therapists in music assisted psychedelic integration will start in the spring of 2024. Please contact us if you are interested finding out more about this program.