REPLAY

In this conversation, Dr. Suzy Ross explores why a psychedelic experience is not the same as completed transformation and what must happen after treatment for change to become embodied in daily life. Drawing on her dissertation, more than 20 years of findings, and her book The Map to Wholeness, Dr. Ross will explain the Figure-8 Model, a 13-phase framework that maps transformation before, during, and long after psychedelic treatment. She will distinguish personal, epistemic, and systemic change; describe integration as part of a broader biopsychospiritual identity transformation; and show how a person’s position in the Figure-8 may help practitioners anticipate treatment dynamics, integration needs, and the likely time required for completion. The conversation previews her forthcoming journal article applying the model to psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Dr. Ross will also introduce the Integr8 Method and Integr8tion Oasis, a six-week post-treatment protocol for helping people metabolize what treatment set in motion, along with Integr8 Certification for guides, founders, and treatment organizations seeking stronger preparation and integration protocols before and after treatment. Attendees will leave with a more precise way to understand integration and clear pathways for applying the work with individuals, programs, and communities.

Key Takeaways

• The podcast “All About Ibogaine” was launched following Trump’s executive order to fast-track ibogaine, aiming to educate newcomers and professionals about ibogaine and psychedelic medicines.
• Dr. Suzy Ross presented her doctoral research-based “Figure-Eight Model of Complete Transformation,” a framework mapping 13 phases of the transformative journey and 9 phases of integration.
• Integration is essential to transformation: without it, as Stanislav Grof concluded from 4,500 medicine journey sessions, no real transformation occurs.
• A complete transformation cycle takes a minimum of 15 years, longer if trauma is involved or if the catalytic experience was exceptionally profound.
• The figure-eight model is fractal and iterative — smaller and larger figure eights are embedded within a primary transformation cycle, meaning a psychedelic journey can compress the entire cycle within a single session.
• Ego strength is a prerequisite for entering the dismemberment phase; without a sufficiently developed ego, the psyche aborts and loops back to begin another cycle.
• Pharmaceuticals such as SSRIs may slow the transformation process, though they remain valid support tools when necessary for daily functioning.
• Dr. Suzy Ross has developed a 25-question assessment instrument and is building an app to help individuals identify their current phase of transformation.
• Her book “The Map to Wholeness” (2020) and her scholarly paper “Who Put the Super in Superhero?” are key published resources on this framework.
• Dr. Suzy Ross offers the “Integration Oasis” six-week protocol and is launching a founding certification training in integration.

Discussed Topics

1. Podcast Background and Purpose

Lakshmi introduced the “All About Ibogaine” Thursday podcast, which began on April 23rd following Trump’s executive order to fast-track ibogaine. The podcast aims to educate newcomers — both professionals and laypeople — about ibogaine, other entheogens, and the importance of integration after transformative psychedelic experiences.

• Details
  • Lakshmi: The podcast interviews long-term practitioners working with medicines, particularly ibogaine, as well as integration specialists, because a big psychedelic journey initiates cycles of transformation that require integration.
  • Lakshmi: Clarified that Dr. Suzy Ross has not taken a full ibogaine journey but has microdosed ibogaine and has had her own transformative experiences through other medicines and spontaneous transcendental events.
  • Susan: Confirmed she has microdosed ibogaine and is working through medical clearance for a full experience due to a heart condition; she has also microdosed psilocybin and participated in ceremony with other medicines.
• Conclusion
  • Ibogaine is not the only portal to transformation; transformation is a universal human process.
  • Integration is the critical and often overlooked component of any transformative experience.

2. Dr. Suzy Ross’s Origin Story and Transcendental Experience

Dr. Suzy Ross shared the personal experience that set the foundation for her life’s work — a spontaneous transcendental experience at age 21 while leading backpacking trips in Colorado.

• Details
  • Susan: While hiking along a mountain spine in the Breckenridge Range after three months immersed in nature, she began leaving her body without any substance, merging with all of existence — rocks, grass, distant parts of the universe — simultaneously.
  • Susan: She moved storm clouds away from her group through pure intention, experiencing it as effortless as moving her elbow, which served as literal evidence of the reality of the experience.
  • Susan: The experience caused her to weep uncontrollably; the song “Amazing Grace” came to her spontaneously as comfort.
  • Susan: This experience informed every moment of her life thereafter and ultimately drove her to dedicate her career to the scientific analysis of life-changing experiences, particularly integration.
  • Lakshmi: Reflected on the paradox of stepping into higher consciousness (entheogenic experience) and then returning to the ego personality, describing it as a schism that integration must bridge.
• Conclusion
  • Spontaneous transcendental experiences, not only psychedelic-induced ones, can be primary catalysts for lifelong transformation.
  • The challenge of integrating such experiences — especially one as vast as cosmic consciousness — can take decades.

3. Doctoral Research and the Birth of the Figure-Eight Model

Dr. Suzy Ross described how her doctoral research question was received during a ceremony and fasting, and how the figure-eight model emerged from 13 months of cooperative inquiry research.

• Details
  • Susan: She engaged in Vision Quest with her Arikara Hidatsa elder teacher before beginning her doctoral degree, and received her research question — integrating life-changing experience — on the first day of a ceremonial fast.
  • Susan: She employed cooperative inquiry methodology with alumni of her transformative travel programs in Costa Rica and Peru, who had participated in 20-day programs involving ceremony, elder work, and visits to ancient sites.
  • Susan: After 13 months, the research team mapped the phases of integration as a circle; Susan recognized that the transformative experience at the top of the circle was the hero’s journey (as studied by Joseph Campbell and anthropology for 100 years), and connected the two circles to form a figure eight.
  • Susan: The figure eight represents two distinct but interconnected processes — the upper half (the transformative/hero’s journey, 13 phases) and the lower half (the integration process, 9 phases).
  • Susan: Stanislav Grof’s conclusion from 4,500 medicine journey sessions — that without integration there is no transformation — substantiates the necessity of the lower half of the figure eight.
• Conclusion
  • The figure-eight model unifies the hero’s journey and the integration process into one complete transformation framework.
  • Integration is not optional; it is the mechanism through which transformation becomes permanent.

4. The 13 Phases of the Figure-Eight Model — Upper Half (Transformative Journey)

Dr. Suzy Ross walked through the phases of the upper half of the figure eight, which constitute the transformative journey.

• Details
  • Susan: The cycle begins at the center of the eight — the “seed” — which originates in the unconscious as readiness to transform into a new version of oneself.
  • Susan: Phase 2 — Departure: Conscious awareness of boredom, stagnation, or yearning for something deeper; the psyche begins seeking opportunities, often through serendipitous or synchronistic events, until one is chosen.
  • Susan: Phase 3 — Catalyst: Begins the moment a concrete commitment is made (e.g., paying money, signing up); the journey has started even before physically leaving home.
  • Susan: Phase 4 — The Life-Changing Experience: The liminal phase; the actual transformative event, which can be joyful, difficult, or both.
  • Susan: Phase 5 — Return: Coming down from the experience; the substance has left the body, decompression begins, and the person starts turning toward home.
  • Susan: The threshold into integration begins the moment one’s foot lands back at home.
  • Lakshmi: Noted that this maps very well to ibogaine journeys — preparation, travel, the catalyst, and coming home.
  • Asha: Added that the model gives context to where people often get lost and helps ground them so they can find their footing and avoid falling into despair at the start of integration.
• Conclusion
  • Each phase has distinct hallmarks and thresholds that can be consciously engaged with through ritual and intentional awareness.
  • Practitioners can use this map to anticipate and support clients at each juncture.

5. The 9 Phases of the Figure-Eight Model — Lower Half (Integration Process)

Dr. Suzy Ross detailed the nine phases of integration, which constitute the lower half of the figure eight and represent the majority of the transformation work.

• Details
  • Susan: If the catalytic experience involved shock (physiological, not just psychological), integration does not begin until the shock wears off.
  • Susan: Phase 5 — Displacement: Lasts days to weeks; characterized by being “out of place” (between the old and new self), a small or large upheaval in basic needs (home, car, job, money, relationships), and the comfort of returning to familiar surroundings.
  • Susan: Phase 6 — Grief and Denial: Grief is multilayered (grief that it’s over, grief about content that arose, grief about the life one returns to, grief about not yet being the better version of oneself); denial vacillates with grief as the psyche tries to avoid facing reality or painful information.
  • Susan: Phase 7 — Disorientation: An identity crisis; the psyche negotiates who one is now in light of the experience, and the worldview framework is shattered by radically new perceptions that don’t fit previous structures; involves an inner tug-of-war between the outdated self and the emerging new self, with experimentation (4 steps forward, 3 steps back).
  • Lakshmi: Described this as a frequency issue — the psychedelic state raises one’s frequency, and returning to ordinary consciousness feels denser; applying higher-frequency insights at a lower frequency is a real challenge.
  • Susan: Phase 8 — Dismemberment (Dark Night of the Soul): Triggered by a serendipitous life event beyond one’s control that forces confrontation with one’s shadow, rejected aspects, and what one avoids; this is the dissolution phase — the caterpillar becoming soup in the chrysalis — where the outdated identity dissolves and the blueprint for the new self begins to emerge (autopoiesis); lasts approximately two years; requires stillness, solitude, and time at home; making it to dismemberment is a positive sign that transformation has become permanent.
  • Susan: Ego strength is a prerequisite for dismemberment — one cannot dissolve what has not been built; without sufficient ego maturity, the psyche aborts and loops back to the top of the figure eight for another cycle.
  • Lakshmi: Asked whether pharmaceutical suppression (e.g., SSRIs) of these states is what is happening broadly in society, interrupting natural transformation cycles.
  • Susan: Confirmed that pharmaceuticals can slow transformation to glacial speed, but acknowledged their validity when needed for daily functioning; transformation still occurs, just more slowly.
  • Susan: Phase 9 — Surrender and Healing: Begins with a threshold moment requiring the person to do something they have avoided their whole life (truth-telling, standing up for themselves, putting themselves first); something of great value — often one’s life — is at stake; once the surrender act is completed (often just minutes in duration), the dragon is slayed and healing begins; mini-surrender moments continue for years but are much smaller; life begins to have levity, hope, and gentler, more nurturing circumstances.
  • Lakshmi: Identified surrender as the frequency shift — dropping baggage and control, allowing new energy and new circumstances to enter.
  • Susan: Phase 10 — Birth: Very brief (three moments, almost nanoseconds); subtle and easily missed; involves being seen by one individual for the first time as the new self, then being seen by a wider group, then being named; described her own birth moment at an industry gathering where she gave a debut talk on the physics of transformation and was named “the integration doctor” by an elder.
  • Susan: Phase 11 — Abundance and Creativity: Life accelerates; serendipitous opportunities, people, and resources arrive in abundance; creative life force energy is high because the new self is still being built; all previously separate strengths and interests begin converging into unified opportunities; requires saying yes to many things and working hard.
  • Susan: Phase 12 — Power: Life slows to a humane pace; systems are in place, helpers are competent, vacation and recreation become possible; power is the natural consequence of transformation — the presence of one’s essence integrated in the body, emanating as a unique frequency; this power cannot be abused; it is pure power, like lightning or water.
  • Susan: Phase 13 (implied final phase, center of figure eight): The completion of one transformation cycle, carrying all accumulated knowledge, healing, and consciousness into the next iteration.
• Conclusion
  • A complete transformation cycle takes a minimum of 15 years; trauma or exceptionally large catalytic experiences extend this timeline.
  • The lower half of the figure eight is the workhorse of transformation — it is where light (higher frequency) is literally brought into matter (the body and life structure).
  • Transformation is fundamentally a process of structure building: dissolving an old structure and building a new one, analogous to the butterfly’s metamorphosis.

6. Fractal and Iterative Nature of the Figure Eight

The discussion explored how the figure-eight model operates at multiple scales simultaneously.

• Details
  • Susan: Transformation is fractal and helical; there are ever-smaller and ever-larger figure eights embedded within the primary figure eight; an in-breath and out-breath could constitute a tiny figure eight, while an entire lifetime could be one phase of a much larger transformation.
  • Lakshmi: Noted that in a massive psychedelic journey, the entire figure eight can be compressed and experienced within a single session, emerging as a changed person without subsequent integration work.
  • Susan: Confirmed that in such cases the medicine itself is performing the integration; the journey contains multiple embedded transformative-integrative iterations.
  • Susan: Knowing a client’s phase of transformation when they arrive for treatment has high predictive capacity for what the medicine may amplify, since psychedelic medicine is a nonspecific amplifier (Grof’s term) of whatever is already present in the psyche.
• Conclusion
  • Practitioners who can identify a client’s current phase of transformation can better anticipate the nature of the medicine experience and tailor preparation and integration support accordingly.
  • The depth and duration of post-medicine integration depends on what phase the person is in when they take the medicine and how large the catalyst is.

7. Applying the Figure Eight to Ibogaine and Psychedelic Medicine Practice

The conversation addressed the practical implications of the figure-eight model for ibogaine providers and psychedelic medicine practitioners.

• Details
  • Lakshmi: Emphasized that ibogaine is not a magic bullet; without integration, transformation does not occur, regardless of how powerful the experience is.
  • Susan: Noted that if a person is genuinely in Phase 2 (departure) when they take medicine, they are poised for a massive life-changing experience; however, most people are in other phases, meaning the medicine journey is a smaller embedded figure eight within their larger primary transformation.
  • Susan: Stated she has a scholarly paper applying the figure eight to psychedelic medicine treatment and practice, not yet submitted for publication.
  • Susan: Described a 25-question assessment instrument available on her website to identify one’s current phase of transformation, and an app in development.
  • Asha: Affirmed that the model gives people context for where they get lost and helps them find their footing rather than falling into despair during integration.
• Conclusion
  • Ibogaine providers and integration coaches should assess clients’ phase of transformation before treatment to optimize preparation, the journey itself, and post-journey integration support.
  • The figure-eight model offers predictive capacity for the type of experiences likely to arise during a medicine journey.

8. Validation and Research Evidence for the Figure-Eight Model

Lakshmi raised questions about the accuracy and empirical grounding of the model.

• Details
  • Susan: All research conducted has involved mapping the figure eight against the actual life circumstances of participants (not self-report beliefs), finding that every phase emerges in sequence, though not identically or simultaneously across individuals.
  • Susan: Described a longitudinal study of 15 students who co-created a transformative travel program to Oaxaca, Mexico; interviewed retrospectively 16–17 years later, all showed evidence of every figure-eight phase in their lives.
  • Susan: Noted that almost all participants had not yet completed their transformation at the time of the 2021 interviews due to the magnitude of the original experience; plans to re-interview all participants within the next six months.
  • Susan: Acknowledged that no study has yet specifically examined the figure eight’s predictive capacity for plant medicine journeys, and called for scholars to conduct such research.
  • Lakshmi: Pointed out that if the model is truly archetypal, it should apply regardless of whether the catalyst is a psychedelic journey or a life event — which Susan’s broader research already supports.
• Conclusion
  • The figure-eight model has been substantiated across multiple research studies and individual transformation mapping sessions.
  • A specific study applying the model to psychedelic medicine journeys has not yet been conducted and represents an important frontier for future research.

9. Rachel’s Historical Observation on Ibogaine’s African Roots

Rachel, a historian, raised a concern about the omission of African origins in American ibogaine discourse.

• Details
  • Rachel: Identified herself as a historian and former adjunct professor at CSU East Bay, San Francisco State, Sonoma State, and UC Berkeley.
  • Rachel: Shared historical context about the Grateful Dead’s first performance under that name in San Jose (connected to San Jose State), noting that a figure associated with early psychedelic culture in that context was referred to only by a racial nickname (“Big Nig”), with no proper name recorded.
  • Rachel: Expressed concern that American ibogaine discourse omits or displaces the African source and roots of ibogaine, which she characterized as a form of racial displacement.
  • Susan: Thanked Rachel and committed to investigating the historical detail about the unnamed figure when she returns to campus.
• Conclusion
  • The African origins and cultural context of ibogaine deserve explicit acknowledgment in American psychedelic discourse.
  • Further historical research into the unnamed figure associated with early San Jose psychedelic culture may be warranted.

10. Dr. Suzy Ross’s Offerings and Resources

Dr. Suzy Ross outlined her available programs, publications, and upcoming offerings.

• Details
  • Susan: Integration Oasis — a six-week integration protocol grounded in science, designed to partner with clinics and groups for post-journey integration support; can be engaged iteratively at reduced cost for ongoing community integration.
  • Susan: Certification training — a founding cohort certification program in integration (lower half of the figure eight) launching soon; upper-half (transformative travel) certifications also available.
  • Susan: 25-question transformation phase assessment instrument available for purchase on her website (suzyross.net); app in development.
  • Susan: “The Map to Wholeness” (2020) — a book presenting the figure-eight model through real-life stories, written for a general audience as a guide for those without a guide.
  • Susan: “Who Put the Super in Superhero?” — a scholarly paper on the physics of transformation, described as her magnum opus; available via Google search.
  • Susan: Unpublished scholarly paper applying the figure eight to psychedelic medicine practice — to be submitted to a journal.
  • Lakshmi: Announced that Dr. Suzy Ross is joining the Mentors and Masters community on Awake (awake.net) and will offer her trainings through that platform; also plans to publish “Who Put the Super in Superhero?” on Awake.
• Conclusion
  • Multiple entry points exist for practitioners and individuals to engage with Dr. Suzy Ross’s work, from self-assessment tools to certification training to community integration programs.

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