Ketamine- Assisted
Psychotherapy
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) is an intentional, therapeutically-held approach that uses ketamine as a catalyst within an ongoing therapeutic relationship.
What is Ketamine
Ketamine is a medicine that works by rapidly shifting how the brain's chemical messengers communicate — creating a temporary window of neurological flexibility that researchers describe as increased neuroplasticity. It quiets the overactive threat-detection systems that keep so many of us locked in loops of depression, anxiety, and trauma response, while simultaneously boosting activity in the brain regions responsible for mood, emotional processing, and new learning.
In plain terms: it loosens the grip of the patterns your nervous system has been holding — sometimes for decades — and opens a brief, precious window where something new becomes possible.
If you're curious about the neuroscience, this short video offers a helpful overview
What is Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) is an intentional, therapeutically-held approach that uses ketamine as a catalyst within an ongoing therapeutic relationship. It is particularly effective for people navigating depression, anxiety, trauma, and the kind of deep stuckness that can persist even after years of therapy, medication, or both.
What distinguishes KAP from ketamine infusion clinics or at-home prescriptions is the container around the medicine — the preparation, the presence, and the integration. The medicine can soften your inner defenses, shift your perspective, and open doorways to parts of yourself that are ordinarily difficult to access. But what you do with what arises — how you meet it, metabolize it, and weave it into your life — is where healing actually lives.
The research is clear: therapeutic support before, during, and after dosing significantly deepens and sustains the benefits of KAP. My role is to be genuinely present with you at every stage — not as a technician administering a protocol, but as a steady, attuned presence who knows you, trusts you, and can hold space for whatever arises.
SomaPsyche Approach to KAP
At SomaPsyche, KAP is practiced through a tailored somatic, parts-based, and altered state lens. We are equally interested in what your body, mind, energy, and spirit know — the sensations, the releases, the places where breath finally arrives, the moments of unexpected spaciousness, and the deeper wisdom that lives beneath the surface of ordinary awareness.
This work is grounded in the belief that you carry an innate capacity for healing — what we call organicity: the body-mind-spirit's natural movement toward wholeness, when given the right conditions. Ketamine offers a different vantage point — a way of seeing yourself and your experience from outside the habitual patterns your nervous system has learned to call "normal." What becomes visible from that vantage point can be profound.
KAP Preparation • Dosing • Integration
Preparation
Before any dosing session, the provider establishes the foundation this work requires: safety, trust, and somatic readiness. Together, you'll explore what is bringing you to this work, any fears or questions you are holding, and the intentions you want to carry into your sessions. Body-based skills are introduced and practiced — grounding, resourcing, and breath work — so that when you enter a dosing session, you have an inner toolkit to draw from.
The provider prepares you by teaching and guiding you through various psychotherapeutic modalities, such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and parts work, so you can utilize these tools throughout the process.
Dosing
Ketamine dosing sessions take place in a carefully prepared clinical setting designed to support your felt sense of safety. Most people find that an eye mask and music help turn attention inward, though the approach is tailored to what feels right for your body and your process. Before receiving the medicine, you are guided to connect with your intention — releasing expectation and arriving with curiosity.
Throughout the session, the provider remains present — not monitoring from a distance, but genuinely alongside you. The provider holds the therapeutic container, stays attuned to your experience, and is available to offer reassurance, grounding, or a quiet witnessing presence as the process unfolds.
Integration
Integration begins as the medicine wears off and continues in the days, weeks, and sometimes months that follow. This is where the work of weaving takes place — exploring what arose during your session, making meaning of it, and discovering how it wants to be lived in your body and in your daily life.
Integration may bring new clarity around old patterns, grief, relief, or a quality of openness you haven't felt in years. It may arrive as a subtle softening rather than a dramatic insight. All of it is valid. All of it is workable. In somatic integration, attention is paid not only to the narrative your mind constructs, but to how your body continues to process and metabolize the experience — because healing, like the body itself, works on its own timeline.
How many sessions
Current research supports a series of six ketamine sessions, typically over six weeks. That said, every nervous system is different, and we'll work collaboratively with your ketamine prescriber to find the rhythm and frequency that's right for you. I often work with clients once a week for 6 weeks, 2 every other week, then monthly.
“When patterns are broken new worlds are born.”
Schedule a Consult
Schedule a consultation and discover what becomes possible when you honor your whole self.