The Distinction
On the nature of discernment
There are three worlds in which this kind of work is practised. Understanding the differences — honestly, without hierarchy — will help you know what you are looking for and whether you have found it.
Three worlds. One Synthesis.
The clinical model
Psychedelic-assisted therapy offered above ground, within a regulated framework — ketamine clinics, MAPS-protocol MDMA therapy, psilocybin trials. Therapists trained in specific protocols administering specific doses in controlled environments.
What it offersThe shamanic model
Traditional medicine work carried within lineage — the shaman initiated by community, carrying medicines with hundreds of years of accumulated wisdom. The hollow bone principle: the facilitator empties, the medicine works through them, healing is accomplished before ceremony begins.
What it offersPayam's approach
Twenty years of genuine inhabitation of both worlds — the rigour of Western therapeutic models (IFS, SE, somatic work) and the depth of initiatory shamanic practice — brought to bear simultaneously on a single human being in a single room.
What this makes possible“It is like an individual sitting in a command post telling someone in a submarine how to navigate the Mariana Trench — without ever having been in the trench, much less being ahead of the vessel as it navigates those treacherous waters.”
Payam has navigated the Trench. In his own body, many times over. He knows the landscape because he has been there — not because he studied it, not because he was trained to describe it, but because the medicines took him there and he survived it and learned the terrain. This is the distinction that no credential can confer and no protocol can replace.
The Synthesis in Practice
The material and the numinous, held in a single body
IFS & hollow bone
The same thing in different languages
In IFS, the facilitator works from self-energy — present, unblended, not meeting their own needs through the work. In shamanic practice, the facilitator is in hollow bone — empty, clean, not the healer but the instrument. These are the same quality described in different languages. Payam has been trained in both and holds them simultaneously.
Protocol & permission
In conversation with the system
The clinical model applies a protocol — a predetermined dose, a predetermined structure, a predetermined outcome. Payam works with permission of the system. The dose is determined in real time by what the system reveals. The structure follows what arises. The outcome is not predetermined — it is what the medicine and the person find together.
Top-down & bottom-up
The body holds what the mind cannot see
IFS is a top-down process — the practitioner speaks to the mind, the mind witnesses the body. This is valuable and insufficient. Eighty percent of the nervous system communicates upward, body to mind. The medicines open the body in a way that verbal protocol cannot reach. Both are needed. This work brings both.
Spirit & psychology
Neither is abandoned at the door
The clinical world has no language for what the medicines open spiritually. The shamanic world has no language for what they open psychologically. Payam works in the space where both are held — acknowledging the spirit of the medicine without abandoning the map of the psyche, and holding the psyche without reducing the medicine to a pharmacological intervention.
Not a service but a turning point
Payam does not take every person who reaches out. He takes the people whose system he believes he can reach — and with whom the work has a genuine chance of altering the direction of a life. That discernment is itself part of what is on offer.
What follows is not a breakdown of costs. It is an account of what is actually present in the room when this work happens — so that the person considering it understands not what they are paying for, but what they are being given access to.
Twenty years of genuine formation — multiple lineages, multiple modalities, brought into synthesis through lived practice rather than accumulated credentials. Recognised internationally by the psychiatrists, physicians, and therapists who refer their most difficult cases here, and by the facilitators who seek consultation on cases beyond their own experience. This cannot be replicated and it cannot be delegated.
A full team across every phase — medical doctor, IFS practitioners, somatic specialists, herbalist, embodiment guides. Each person holds a critical part of the work. The team is not peripheral to the process. It is the process.
Preparation that takes as long as it takes. There is no standard timeline. Preparation is complete when the system is genuinely ready — not when the calendar says it should be. This cannot be rushed without destroying what makes it safe.
Multi-day ceremony with Payam's full presence from first to last moment. He has sat with people through fifteen-hour ceremonies when the medicine ran long. He does not leave. He does not hand off. There is no substitute for this quality of presence.
Integration support for as long as it is genuinely useful. The work does not end on the mat. The investment covers the full arc — the preparation that made ceremony possible and the integration that makes the ceremony mean something.
A life's work, not a service. Payam has given up a great deal to do this with integrity — including the financial ease that other paths would have offered. What you are receiving is the distilled result of that choice. That has a value that is independent of market rate.
Common Questions
What you may be curious about before first contact
"Is this legal?"
Payam works in the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United States. In each jurisdiction, the ceremonial use of the medicines he carries is either legally permitted, decriminalised, or held within a protected religious framework. This work is accessed by referral only — because the referral relationship and the reputation built through it is the most honest form of vetting available in a field with no reliable credential system. The specific legal picture for any given medicine and any given person is addressed directly and honestly in the first conversation.
"I've tried Ketamine and Ayahuasca. How is this different?"
Payam has worked with people who arrived after ayahuasca or ketamine experiences that left them more dysregulated than before — not because the medicine failed them, but because the container did. No medicine in this work is administered according to a standard clinical protocol. Each is chosen, timed, and titrated through attunement — in real time, in conversation with what the individual's system actually needs in that moment. Payam works within a full relational container built over months, informed by IFS parts work, with somatic tracking throughout, within a multi-day ceremonial arc. The medicine may be the same. The holding is not remotely the same.
Contraindications
Certain personality structures — particularly cluster B presentations — require significant clinical support that this work does not replace. There are additionally certain medical contraindications where this work will not be suitable for seekers. In these cases the medicines can open more than the system can currently hold. This is assessed carefully in preparation.
"What if something goes wrong in ceremony?"
Payam has not had a seeker have a bad trip. Not because difficult things do not arise — they do, and sometimes they are what the ceremony is for — but because the preparation, the relationship, the titration, and the quality of presence mean that when difficult things arise, they are held within a container that was built to hold them. There is always a third party present. The ceremonial space is never left unattended. What the Western world calls a bad trip is, in Payam's experience, most often the thing the person most needed to see — and whether it can be met depends entirely on whether the preparation was adequate. This is why preparation cannot be skipped.
Coming back to self
“Re-membering the unblemished self that, beneath everything, you fundamentally are."
The work does not begin with a recommendation that you need it. It begins with an honest conversation about where you are, what you are carrying, and whether this is the right fit at the right moment — for both of you. There is no pressure. There is no pitch. There is just the conversation.