Consciousness Coaching

Consciousness coaching in Sydney & online. Support for psychedelic integration, imaginal journeying, nature-based practices, and other expanded state modalities.

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Explore non-ordinary states of consciousness as doorways to unfolding

Expanded states of awareness offer powerful ways to explore what is to be human. In these moments of expansion—whether through the openings of visionary experiences, exploring imaginal landscapes, the awe of a sunset—something remarkable becomes available. You may experience a sense of wholeness, revealing layers of presence, wisdom, and aliveness that emerge naturally from within.

This work recognises that transformation rarely happens in a single event. Instead, it unfolds through ongoing relationship: moments of preparation that attune you to what's ready to surface; experiences that shift your perception; integration that allows new insights to reshape how you live; and ongoing inquiry that bridges the sacred and the ordinary. Whether you're curious about this territory for the first time, preparing for an upcoming ceremony, or seeking support to embody what you've already glimpsed, we work with the natural intelligence that moves through each phase of your journey.

The invitation is to discover how expanded states can serve your deeper unfolding, honouring both the mystery of consciousness and its practical expression in daily life.

Let's explore together

Offerings

  • Consciousness coaching seamlessly integrate non-ordinary states within a larger transformational journey. Rather than treating profound experiences as isolated events, this is coaching that naturally incorporates preparation, breakthrough experiences, integration, and gentle exploration as they serve your deeper development.

    Within this container, we might engage in regular coaching conversations, prepare for upcoming ceremonies, work with dreams when they feel alive, facilitate guided journeys, and support integration of expanded state experiences. All of these flow together organically based on what's most needed at any given time.

    What it involves:

    • A coaching relationship as the foundation for all expanded states work

    • Supporting preparation for upcoming ceremonies, retreats, or intensive practices

    • Processing and integrating experiences as their implications continue to emerge

    • Working with modalities such as imaginal journeying, dreamwork, and breathwork to deepen the process

    • Tracking recurring themes that surface across different experiences and modalities

    • Bridging insights from expanded states into embodied changes in daily life

    • Navigating identity shifts and life changes

    Why this approach:

    The combination of depth-oriented coaching with expanded states work creates one of the most powerful transformational containers available. While expanded states can catalyse extraordinary shifts, they often remain isolated peaks without proper relational support. Conversely, traditional coaching, however skillful, rarely accesses the depths that non-ordinary states can reveal. Together, they create a synergy where breakthrough and coaching amplify each other, allowing transformation to unfold with both depth and sustainability.

    For whom:

    • Those committed to sustained work who want comprehensive support across multiple experiences and extended integration periods.

    • Particularly valuable for people planning significant experiences, such as transformational retreats or vision quests, and would like to approach them in the context of a longer journey with coaching support

    • Also ideal for those engaging with multiple modalities or navigating significant life transitions catalyzed by expanded states work.

    Format:

    Typically a 6-month container with regular sessions that can include ongoing developmental work, preparation, and integration, and various modalities as needed.

  • Preparation creates the conditions for meaningful non-ordinary state experiences. It’s about establishing the inner and outer conditions that allow profound experiences to serve your deeper development rather than remaining isolated peak moments.

    Preparation is transformative work. Here, you clarify what's truly ready to unfold and create the container for it to emerge safely.

    Preparation involves:

    • Exploring what's emerging in your life

    • Clarifying intentions that emerge from presence rather than trying to control outcomes

    • Working with fears, expectations, concerns, and resistance

    • Ensuring appropriate set and setting for experiences

    • Engaging in imaginal practices

    • Establishing somatic anchors

    • Education about non-ordinary states

    For whom:

    • Anyone preparing for consciousness-expanding experiences such as psychedelic journeys, vision quests, breathwork journeys, silent retreats, transformational retreats, dark retreats, and other practices

    • Essential for those new to this territory and valuable for experienced practitioners seeking deeper preparation.

    Format:

    Individual sessions leading up to experiences, or ongoing sessions as part of larger coaching container.

  • Integration supports the natural process by which experiences reorganize your entire way of being. Rather than trying to interpret experiences, we work with what continues to unfold—new sensitivities, shifting perspectives, emerging capacities.

    Broadly speaking, integration unfolds in three phases: immediate (first 24 hours), unfolding (days to weeks), longer-term (months)

    The most profound changes often happen weeks or months after an experience as its implications gradually reshape how you inhabit your life.

    Integration involves:

    • Working with material that surfaces

    • Distinguishing genuine insight from spiritual inflation

    • Embodying insights into new ways of being

    • Navigating identity shifts and existential reorientation

    • Supporting life changes that follow profound experiences

    • Processing what continues to unfold over time

    • Support in case of post-experience difficulties

    For whom:

    • Anyone who has had altered state experiences and wants support integrating them—whether from retreats, breathwork sessions, psychedelic journeys, vision quests, or any other experience within the scope of my practice

    • People who have experienced spontaneous awakenings and other unplanned openings

    • Especially valuable profound experiences that are difficult to make sense of or embody.

    Format:

    Sessions following experiences, ongoing integration work over weeks or months, or as part of comprehensive Journey Work approach.

  • The imaginal realm is a dimension of experience speaks through images, symbols, meaning, and resonance. Imaginal journeying involves consciously entering this dimension and participating with what spontaneously emerges.

    Imaginal journeying takes many different forms, such as guided, music-supported, breathwork, shamanic, and nature-based journeys.

    Imaginal journeying offers access to a way of knowing that has been central to human transformation across cultures and throughout history.

    [Learn more about imaginal journeying]

  • Dreams are one of the most accessible altered states we experience regularly, yet few people learn to work with them consciously. This offering provides guidance for engaging with dreams as sources of wisdom and creative inspiration.

    [Learn more about dreamwork and active imagination]

  • If you're drawn to consciousness exploration but unsure where to begin, or if you've had experiences that feel incomplete or confusing, this offering provides space to explore what might serve your development most deeply.

    Together, we explore your relationship with expanded states, what's currently surfacing in your life, and how different approaches might support your unfolding.

    For those who've had challenging or disorienting experiences, this also provides frameworks for understanding what happened and support for moving forward with greater clarity and groundedness.

    What it can involve:

    • Exploring your history with expanded states (if any) and what's drawing you to this work

    • Understanding your intentions and what transformation you're sensing

    • Exploring microdosing approaches, including legal alternatives, as well as microdosing classic psychedelics for those in jurisdictions where it's permitted

    • Providing frameworks for making sense of non-ordinary states when needed

    • Reviewing different modalities and approaches available

    • Sensing together what feels most aligned with your current edge

    • Addressing any concerns, questions, or hesitations

    • Creating stabilising practices if feeling ungrounded from recent experiences

    • Creating a potential path forward

    For whom:

    • Anyone curious about expanded states work but unsure where to start.

    • Those who've had experiences elsewhere and want perspective on integration needs.

    • People considering intensive practices who want guidance.

    • Also valuable for those who've had confusing or challenging experiences and need orientation.

    Format:

    Single 60-minute session, either in-person or online. Can be repeated if ongoing support is needed. No commitment to further work required.

Do you feel called to explore? Let's connect

What is a Deeply Expanded State?

An altered state of consciousness temporarily suspends the way you usually navigate consensus reality.

A deeply expanded state goes further. It's an altered state that becomes oriented toward wholeness in ways that feel more alive, spacious, and true.

In deeply expanded states, you might find yourself:

  • Softening and releasing inner barriers, opening to a vibrant stream of feelings that connect you deeply with your whole being

  • Embracing whatever emotions or memories arise with unconditional love and acceptance, melting patterns of resistance and overcompensation

  • Feeling the boundary between yourself and the world becoming permeable or disappearing

  • Experiencing time slowing down or ceasing altogether, with the present moment expanding infinitely, free from worries about the past or future

  • Being flooded with intense emotions of bliss, ecstasy, unconditional love, or deep peace as your heart expands with tenderness

  • Experiencing a profound sense of being at home

  • Encountering the world as luminous, meaningful, shot through with beauty

  • Emerging renewed with a heart full of gratitude and reverence for life, grounded in your natural creativity, wisdom, and resilience

Embodied Transformation

Imagine that you’ve stepped into a realm where the self dissolves and everything becomes one shimmering field of love. You’ve touched a living intelligence that moves through all things. You’ve received profound insights that reshaped your very perception of reality.

And then... the ordinary world reclaims you.

How do you live from what you've glimpsed? How do you infuse that boundless presence into a life filled with mundane challenges and routines? Whether your encounter was a gentle whisper or an ecstatic revelation, the question echoes: what now?

It's only natural to sense a divide between those transcendent moments and the flow of everyday existence—to yearn for a return to that sacred space. Allow this yearning to be an invitation into a deeper possibility: what you’re looking for is here right now, but in subtler ways.

This is where our work begins.

Step into embodied transformation

Beyond Experiences

Many approaches to expanded states focus either on the experience itself or on making sense of it afterward.

This work takes the perspective that expanded states are expressions of an intelligence and resourcefulness that's already moving through your life, seeking deeper embodiment.

From this way of looking, preparation, experience, integration, and the rest of your life flow as one continuous unfolding. The same presence that guides you through a profound opening is what helps you navigate a difficult conversation with your partner. The capacity you develop for staying present with the sublime in ceremony is what allows you to remain open during life's inevitable challenges.

The most profound unfolding happens not through analysing what an experience "meant," but through sensing how your deeper nature wants to express itself through your relationships, your work, your creative impulses, your daily choices.

This way of approaching the work extends far beyond having powerful experiences, as meaningful as they are in their own right. It's about developing the capacity to live from the depth that those experiences reveal, allowing expanded awareness to become your natural way of being.

Ready to unfold this in your life?

Being Your Journey

The Threshold

Something calls you toward expanded consciousness—
As a path to deeper Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

If you sense that lasting transformation requires more than just having experiences—

I invite you to explore what emerges when profound openings meet attuned guidance.

Step over the threshold

Working together

  • I’m Marcel, an Aletheia Coaching practitioner and certified psychedelic practitioner through the Psychedelic Coaching Institute (Third Wave). This work arises from nearly 15 years of immersion in contemplative, imaginal, somatic, and relational traditions.

    My own path with expanded states has revealed both their unique potential and their real challenges. They’ve opened me to profound beauty and insight, and at times confronted me with experiences that humbled me to the core. What I’ve learned is that the real transformation doesn’t come from peak states themselves, but from carefully weaving their gifts into daily life.

    In a cultural moment where psychedelics and ecstatic states are often hyped or oversimplified, I aim to steward these tools with depth, discernment, and ethical grounding. My role is to hold a safe, skillful container where your own intelligence and wholeness can unfold through the doorway of expanded states.

  • 1) Expanded states coaching
    A coaching engagement combining developmental coaching and expanded states work.

    • Scope: developmental coaching, preparation, and integration

    • Cadence: bi-weekly (weekly in month one if helpful)

    • Timeframe: 6 months

    • Good for: deep transformational work, sustained integration

    2) Experience-centred package
    A short arc built around a specific experience (e.g., retreat, vision quest, legal psychedelic experience).

    • Scope: preparation and integration

    • Format: by arrangement

    • Good for: focused support before and after a defined event

    3) Guided journeys
    A tailored arrangement where the experience itself (imaginal journeying, dreamwork sessions, breathwork, nature-based solo/quest) is guided, with preparation and integration woven in.

    • Scope: preparation, guided experience (psychedelics excluded), and integration

    • Format: single session, series, or half/full-day immersion

    • Good for: bespoke depth work

    • Expanded States Coaching (4-month+ coaching containers): from AU $500/month

    • Preparation & Integration: AU $250/session

    • Consultation & Education: AU $250/session

    • Guided Journeys (non-psychedelic): by arrangement (proposal after a brief consult)

    Each coaching session lasts approximately one hour.

  • Online via Zoom (available globally)

    In-person in Sydney:

    • Freshwater Wellness Centre (Northern Beaches)

    • Public locations around Manly

    • Other locations might be possible by arrangement

Schedule a conversation

Questions and answers

  • Coaching is a collaborative partnership that supports your personal and professional development. Unlike therapy, which often focuses on healing the past, or consulting, which provides expert advice, coaching creates a space to unlock meaningful growth and navigate life’s complexities with more wisdom, resourcefulness, and creativity.

    In a coaching relationship, we work together to deepen your self-awareness, expand your perspectives, and help you discover fresh ways to approach challenges.

    Coaching is not:

    • Giving advice or telling you what to do

    • Sharing expertise from personal experience

    • Problem-solving on your behalf

    • Providing therapy or counselling

    • Analysing past events to heal trauma

    • Following rigid systems or formulas

  • While both coaching and therapy can support personal growth, they serve different purposes.

    Therapy is essential for:

    • Addressing mental health conditions

    • Working through trauma

    • Managing serious addiction

    • Processing significant emotional burdens

    Clinical applications are outside the scope of coaching.

    Coaching is appropriate for:

    • Cultivating emotional intelligence

    • Exploring meaning and purpose

    • Deepening qualities such as presence, wisdom, and compassion

    • Aligning actions with your deeepest values and aspirations

    • Discovering fresh and creative ways to navigate life’s complexities

    • Cultivating happiness and well-being

    In principle, therapy can also support these same goals. You might be drawn to coaching because:

    • The collaborative and less formal nature of the coaching relationship resonates

    • You want to explicitly focus on development

    • The methodology used by the coach appeals

    • The coach has a specific skillset that aligns with your needs

    • The coaching container feels right for your current journey

  • Many people invest in books, courses, and programs for personal development. While these resources provide valuable knowledge and insights, there's often a gap between understanding concepts intellectually and embodying real change in your life - what's known as the "knowing-doing gap."

    Coaching offers something fundamentally different from self-study:

    • Skilled support in working with what's emerging in real-time

    • Help in recognising and working with parts of yourself that may resist change

    • Guidance in moving from intellectual understanding to embodied knowing

    • Partnership in following threads of development that may be hard to navigate alone

    • Support in staying with and deepening into challenging experiences that you might otherwise avoid

    Beyond these practical benefits, the coaching relationship provides a unique space where fundamental psychological needs can be met in fresh ways:

    • Being truly seen and understood

    • Feeling "I'm not alone in this"

    • Experiencing your impact and capability

    • Being constructively challenged to grow

    • Discovering who you uniquely are

    • Having your experience deeply acknowledged

    Your sense of self, others, and the world unfolds through relationship. Since life itself happens in relationship - with others, with work, with challenges - real development often needs a space where new possibilities can emerge through genuine human connection. The coaching relationship provides this space, offering both practical guidance and the conditions for natural growth to emerge.

    Many clients find they make breakthroughs in coaching conversations that hadn't occurred despite years of self-study and courses. This is because the unique conditions of the coaching relationship support deeper insight and transformation.

Disclaimer

This work supports the conscious, ethical, and lawful exploration of non-ordinary states of consciousness. It neither encourages nor glorifies the use of substances. It does not condone any illegal activity.

I provide preparation and integration support for psychedelic experiences that you independently choose to undertake in jurisdictions where this is legally permitted. Microdosing coaching is limited to legal substances. No other psychedelic-related services are provided.

All offerings are provided for educational and personal development purposes only. They are not medical, psychological, or psychiatric treatment, nor a substitute for professional healthcare. I do not provide crisis support. If you are navigating acute mental health conditions or require medical guidance, please consult qualified healthcare professionals.

You remain fully responsible for your choices, your safety, and your compliance with applicable laws.

Ready to start your journey?

To start your journey, schedule an exploratory convesation using the form below. There's no cost. Just a space to connect, ask questions, and sense what might be supportive.