Options for your medicine journey
What happens if you come to Taylor for a medicine journey?
Depends.
I you are my coaching client, I guide your journey.
If you’re working with a therapist who will be present, there are two options: I co-facilitate your journey with your therapist or you and your therapist use Taylor Cottage in my absence.
Whichever you choose, protocols for preparation, guidance, and integration are needed. These, as well as costs, are outlined below.
preparation
Some people benefit from inviting their partner or a close friend to witness their journey. I encourage this practice if you are confident that their presence would not distract from your experience.
If this is your first experience with the medicine, I recommend testing the effects by using a gradually increasing micro dose for a few weeks before your journey. For the week before our session, you will need to abstain from alcohol, recreational drugs, and SSRIs or similar medications.
During one or more of our preliminary conversations, we can discuss the typical arc of a journey and the varieties of experiences you might have — all this with the understanding that no two journeys are the same and that the medicine tends to bring journeyers what they are ready to receive but not necessarily what they wish to receive.
If I guide your journey: You and I engage in a series of online or in-person sessions to explore your history with plant medicine, your motivation and intention for the journey, and your concerns and aspirations for your experience. We will schedule the journey when we both agree that you are ready.
If I co-facilitate your journey with your therapist: With your permission — and possibly as a three-way call, I consult with your therapist before we begin our preparatory conversations, as outlined above.
guidance
On the day of the journey, we review your motivations and intentions. If you are interested, we smudge one another with sage and/or palo santo and offer prayers of gratitude to the medicine.
While waiting for the medicine to take effect, we settle into the space, gather the eyeshade, blankets, and other props, and quietly meditate.
During your experience, I observe — taking notes when you speak or when your body is active.
While I cannot say with certainty what your journey will be like, I can give you the benefit of my experience here.
I recommend using music to support your experience. We can use one of my curated playlists or you may compile your own journey playlist.
At any point during your journey, if you would like to be outdoors, I can help you to the backyard deck, where you can lie on a yoga mat and look up through mature pecan trees and hear birds.
I will have tea and fruit ready, plus a light meal to help ground you at the end of your journey.
If I guide your journey: I sit with you — taking brief breaks for restroom and meals, always within earshot. If you ask to be alone, I’m in the next room meditating or doing yoga.
If I co-facilitate your journey with your therapist: We both sit with you, taking turns for restroom and meal breaks so that you always have a guide next to you. If you ask to be alone, we’re in the next room.
integration
As your experience draws to a close, a conversation with me — and your therapist, if present — can begin. If you are accompanied by a partner or friend, they are part of this conversation. Alternatively, you may choose to write in your journal or just go to sleep.
If I guide your journey: Ideally you will be staying overnight. On the following morning, we will have an in-depth conversation about what I observed and what you experienced. In addition, we will discuss your impressions of what might currently be shifting in your consciousness and wonder together where this will lead.
When we feel satisfied with the extent to which we’ve explored and documented your experience, you will return home — with a copy of my notes, if you wish. Before you leave, we will discuss the importance of mindful re-entry into your daily life and make a date for a follow-up online call within the next two or three days.
We will continue periodic conversations for as long as you find them helpful.
If I co-facilitate your journey with your therapist: After our initial post-journey conversation, you and your therapist will determine next steps for integration. Whether or not I am involved will be up to you and your therapist.
cost
I do this for love, not for money. That said, I’m a retired educator with rent and bills to pay. Bottom line: I’m willing to consider working with whatever conditions you and/or your client bring, within reason and in fairness.
The cost of renting the space is specified below within the various options. The cost for any meals I might provide is negotiable.
The cost is $75/hour for one-to-one any online preparation and follow-up integration the journeyer and I might do.
My preference is that the cost for my presence and guidance during the journey be on a sliding scale. I’m aware that some journeyers have scant resource. In such cases, during the remainder of 2025, I am willing to provide my services in exchange for whatever gift the journeyer is moved to give — financial or otherwise.
For journeyers who can afford to pay, I would expect to receive between $500 and $3000 for my services.
If I guide your journey: Your cost to stay overnight is the same as for my AirBnB guests, minus their fees and taxes and with half the cleaning fee. This amounts to $155/night, plus a one-time cleaning fee of $150. If you are present for the day only, your cost is $100 for the use of the space.
For journey-related costs, see above.
If I co-facilitate your journey with your therapist: I have no involvement in therapist fees; this is a private arrangement.
What I charge will depend on the amount of one-to-one online preparation and follow-up integration the journeyer and I do, if any; the length of the stay — day-long or overnight; and whether I provide meals.
For journey-related costs, see above. More on costs here.
If you and your therapist use Taylor Cottage in my absence, the two of you will work out the finances and you will pay only for the Cottage rental (note: you would reserve directly through me rather than through AirBnB).
Testimonials
These words are from a woman who had undergone training in guiding medicine journeys during the year before I guided her solo experience.
Kathryn creates a space of permission, curiosity, and playfulness. — O.M.
A friend helped me hold space for his wife’s journey. Afterward, he had these words:
I’ve never felt so close to her. This has been the most intimate experience we’ve had in our 50 years together. — W.W.
This man experienced two medicine journeys with me after multiple online coaching sessions, using the enneagram as his main self-discovery tool. He had been taking anti-depressants for 38 years before his first journey.
So much has happened in my world since I began my first one-on-one with you — and then my eventual journeys. By ending my dependence on antidepressants, I probably made some aspects of my growth a bit more challenging, given that depression apparently doesn't disappear just because I want it to. No worries, I am still doing okay ...
I now recognize that some of what seemed like depression was likely me fighting off the exiles that have been traveling with me for years — or at least learning to live with the fact that they are there, real or imagined.
This leads me into how I have managed my newer way of living. Yes, I still suffer from depression but I now have the ability to practice steps to deal without medication, with the exception of occasional micro-dose. The RAIN of Compassion really helps me a lot, and I'm certain that my practice of it has benefitted others close to me. — R.D.