Why Plant Medicine Is Not Shadow Work

There’s something I’ve been sitting with for a while. Watching it unfold and feeling it in my body.

Recently something transpired in a community I am a part of, and have felt the pull to speak on it.

I've seen many people walking away from plant medicine ceremonies, while , yes, they were cracked open but they come out completely disoriented.

They’re left confused, vulnerable, or flooded by things they don’t know how to hold.

They had visions. They cried. They saw “the truth.” Io then return to their lives, not knowing what to do with any of it, because they weren’t held properly during the integration process. Some experienced moments during the ceremony that left them confused or even unsafe, but didn’t feel comfortable voicing this to the facilitators.

Here’s what I need to say really clearly: Plant medicine is not shadow work.

If it was, in plant medicine truly created a safe and skilled container, participants would feel grounded enough to bring up what happened. They would feel safe to say, “That didn’t sit right with me,” or “Something felt off.”

The thing is, when someone walks into a ceremony already carrying shadow patterns like fear of expressing themselves, fear of upsetting others, or the fear of being seen as too much or too sensitive, and those same patterns get triggered during the ceremony — that’s not healing. That’s retraumatising.

What happens in some cases is that instead of being guided through that, the participant is often left to make sense of it alone. Or worse, they’re told by facilitators that “the medicine is working in mysterious ways,” or that “their reaction is just resistance.”

In that moment, their shadow has been activated — but it has not seen, named, and certainly not integrated.

This is how spiritual bypassing is born.

The truth is when someone hasn’t done proper shadow work before sitting with medicine, they don’t even realise what’s happening inside them. They think their discomfort is a failure. They end up blaming themselves, or they float it away with vague affirmations. But the root remains.

Its true, the medicine might expose your shadow, but it will never walk with you through it.

That’s your job.  And more importantly, that’s the job of a trained, trauma-informed, energetically clear facilitator.

If that’s not present in the space, then what’s happening isn’t truly healing. It’s performance, projection and / or spiritual theatre.

I’m not here for that.

What Plant Medicine Does Do

Don’t get me wrong. Plant medicine is powerful, I know that, it can open things that most people never access through the mind alone.

It can show you what you’ve buried, soften your defenses and dissolve the filters you normally see through. It can open portals to ancestral memory, grief, beauty, rage, shame. It can flood your system with emotion or connect you with archetypes and energies you didn’t know you carried.

You can walk away from a ceremony completely altered.

But here’s the thing. That altered state is temporary.

That's the point. Plant medicine isn’t supposed to heal you, its meant to open you up and show you what needs to be healed. And then it steps back.

The real work begins after.

Why It’s Not Shadow Work

Shadow work is not trippy. Its’s not psychedelic nor does it give you visions.

It’s repetitive. It’s slow. It’s often silent. It's usually very human.

Shadow work is about making different choices when faced with your trauma screaming. You learn to feel the rage and not becoming it. You move into owning the shame without collapsing. You honour the process of tracking the part of you that manipulates, deflects, or dissociates, and then bringing it into the light without judgment.

Shadow work is in the moment you hold a boundary instead of people-pleasing. It’s in the moment you stay present with your inner child instead of spiritually bypassing her with “I’m fine now.” And it’s in the way you take full responsibility for the way you distort truth in relationships, in work and in love.

It is unnecessary to drink a brew to do that. What is needed is courage, presence and your devotion.

The Trap of Spiritual Performance

We’re in a moment in time where plant medicine is trending.

There are people flying it in, posting about it, facilitating it after sitting a few ceremonies and repeating words they heard from a “shaman” and positioning themselves as guides.

I get it. I really do. These experiences can be profound and even life-changing.

But I’ve also seen how people can use plant medicine as a performance of healing. The container becomes a space where emotional release gets confused with emotional integration. Where tears in ceremony are confused with transformation. Where having a vision is confused with having capacity.

It’s easier to collapse into the arms of Ayahuasca than it is to sit in a sober room and finally feel the wound you’ve been avoiding since childhood.

It’s easier to purge in ceremony than it is to sit with the part of you that still believes love must be earned.

It’s easier to “see the truth” than it is to consistently choose it — every day, in every decision, especially when no one is watching.

The Real Work Is in the Return

Plant medicine can open a door, but what you do after you walk through it is where the work is.

The healing is in the integration and in the embodiment of who you are now becoming . Its in how you live your life, in how you relate to world, to yourself and the ones around you. Its In how you show up for your body, your nervous system and your inner child.

The healing is in how you ground what you saw into who you become.

It’s in breaking the pattern when no one else is doing it, and sitting still when your trauma tells you to run. The healing is found when you speak your truth even when silence feels safer.

That’s shadow work.

That’s what I do. That’s what I teach. This is what I’ve lived through. This is what has set me free.

A Final Note on Responsibility

If you’re called to plant medicine, let it be from a grounded place. Let it be intentional. Let it be in ceremony — real ceremony. Let it be with someone who has been initiated and trained to hold what you might open.

Don’t ask the medicine to do what only you can. Don’t ask it to parent you, integrate you, or walk your path for you. It won’t. It can't.

You still have to face yourself. You still have to feel. You still have to choose again and again.

The work isn’t in the revelation its in the re-patterning. In the re-alignment and the re-membering.

That’s what shadow work is. It’s not something you visit occasionally, it’s a path you walk everyday, with love, honesty and devotion to what is real.

And no one can do that for you. Only you can.