Psilocybin Retreat for Therapists in Portugal
Meeting the territory from the inside. A four-day self-experience retreat in the Algarve for therapists, mental health professionals and coaches: one carefully prepared psilocybin journey, and the slower work of making sense of it.
Why therapists come to a psilocybin retreat
Your clients are already bringing these experiences to you. Some travelled to a retreat abroad. Some sat in a ceremony closer to home. Some took mushrooms with a friend and found themselves somewhere they had not expected to go. They come back changed, sometimes clearer, sometimes shaken, and they bring it into your room.
Most training never prepared us for what comes next. You cannot accompany a journey you have never made: direct experience changes how you listen when a client tries to describe something they have no words for.
The journey is not the centre of this retreat, though. The centre is the day after: the work of meaning. When something felt profoundly true but cannot be literally true, how do you stay loyal to what was felt without explaining it away? We work on that question with your own material first, while it is still fresh.
Self-experience, not facilitator training
What the retreat is
A small group of therapists and other practitioners, each with a personal, prepared psilocybin journey, followed by a full day of integration. We look at what arose for you, and then at what it teaches about accompanying others through experiences like these.
It is for practitioners who already meet clients touched by these experiences, in clinical, ceremonial or unregulated settings, and who want to become more at ease with not knowing.
What the retreat is not
We do not teach you to lead ceremonies or guide psychedelic sessions. That is a different profession with different risks.
It is not a substitute for clinical judgement either. Questions of diagnosis and acute risk belong with psychiatry, and we are clear throughout about where that line sits.
What therapists say about Vine of the Soul Retreats
Psychotherapists and practitioners who have sat in ceremony with us, on how it changed their work with clients.
“Attending mushroom ceremonies has really helped me to understand the experience and has definitely helped me in discussing psychedelics with clients who are considering it. And even though I don’t name my own experience with clients, it has also helped me to work through and integrate the experiences that my clients have had with psychedelics.”
“My Ayahuasca journey with Vine of the Soul Retreats changed something fundamental in my openness to working with clients in relation to their spiritual beliefs. I cannot deny the experience I had, and it now seems very limited to restrict my understanding of the world to a purely material scientific one.”
OliverPsychotherapist, UK
“Vine of the Soul Retreats delivers a safe place filled with compassion while holding a highly professional standard. As a therapist, the retreat helped me greatly expand my capacity to holding my clients by finding a deeper compassion and empathy for my own processes.”
“Beyond the retreat, what I found extremely helpful was the integration process, as Bianca’s rich experience and knowledge helped me integrate my more spiritual insights into realistic, lasting change.”
VeraClinical Hypnotherapist & Life Coach, UK
“The harder work is the integration of what this all means to you. It is harder than the actual medicine, but it’s less harsh.”
Read Karla’s full account
“I would like to share my honest review from the 5-day flexible retreat, from a psychologist’s point of view.
I enjoyed the preparation for the medicine. It was intense and felt like it should be: not just the physical part of the preparation, but also the psychological. You are becoming more focused on your intentions.
The journey itself was extremely intense for me, more so than I thought it would be. It showed me the hard truths about the narratives we tell ourselves; it opened the books we keep closed and avoid. There was a kind of ‘death of ego’, yet it was calming to see how small our worries are in the greater scheme of things. There was a sense of everything being connected. The medicine didn’t always take me where I wanted to go; perhaps I wasn’t ready, or wasn’t fully wanting to go there.
The harder work is the integration of what this all means to you and how you can implement the learnings. This is where I feel therapy should continue with someone trained in the field who has experience with this type of medicine. Bianca offers this post-retreat, and I would suggest it to anyone who works with her. It is so easy to fall back into our patterns. It is harder than the actual medicine, but it’s less harsh.
It is not for everyone, and caution should be taken when making this decision. There are quite a few very expensive retreats out there that will just accept anyone. Bianca’s retreat is not like this: she only accepts people who will benefit from this journey.
I would be interested in a retreat that is specifically focused on therapists, as I feel the focus would be on therapy for ourselves and others.
A special thank you to Bianca, who truly wants to spread good in the world, and I feel is succeeding.” (shortened)
These practitioners joined our general retreats; the Retreat for Therapists is new in 2027. Quoted with their permission.
The four-day retreat schedule
One arrival, one journey, one integration, one return: unhurried by design. Wednesday to Saturday, so you have Sunday to land before your Monday clients.
Arrival
- 12:00Arrival
- One-to-one preparation conversation
- Dinner together
- Opening circle: where psychedelics stand today, and the questions all of us in this work are facing
The journey
- Breakfast
- Group preparation
- 12:00Psilocybin ceremony
- 19:30Dinner, then rest
Integration
- Breakfast
- Personal integration circle: what arose, and what it asks of you
- Lunch and rest
- Turning outward: helping others integrate experiences like these
- Dinner
Return
- Breakfast
- Closing reflections
- 12:00Farewells
One psilocybin ceremony with a personal dose
We work with psilocybin mushrooms in a single ceremony. Your dose is personal and agreed with you beforehand: light, medium or full, chosen for your experience, your intention and your nervous system.
We serve the mushrooms with ginger tea to settle the stomach, so that as little attention as possible goes to the body and as much as possible to the work. The ceremony is held by Bianca and Veronica, with our retreat helper.
Before you come, a screening and preparation call makes sure this is right for you, medically and personally. Not everyone is accepted, and that is part of the care.
A retreat house in the Algarve, in a pomegranate orchard
The retreat takes place at our house in the Algarve, near Faro: an old farmhouse in the middle of a pomegranate orchard, with sheep and goats on the land and quiet all around.
A small group of up to seven practitioners stays together for three nights, with all meals prepared at the house. What is shared in the group stays in the group, and we never publish names or photos of participants.
Your facilitators: Bianca and Veronica
Bianca Diana Stumm
Bianca came to this work after years in ERP consulting and her own way through burnout. Since 2021 she has accompanied more than 850 people through ceremony, and through the months of integration that decide whether anything lasts.
She works trauma-informed, in the space where psychology meets meaning. She is not a psychiatrist, and says so plainly whenever it matters.
Veronica
Veronica came to this work through medicine. She practised as a neurologist in Chișinău, Moldova, and then completed a master’s in clinical psychology to understand the psychological processes she saw in her patients.
Today she works as a clinical RTT hypnotherapist and holistic coach, with somatics and mindfulness. She brings clinical calm to the ceremony room, and a non-judgemental space to the circles.
2027 dates
Two retreats for therapists in 2027.
Up to 7 participants per retreat. All other dates, including our 5-day flexible retreats, are in the retreat calendar.
Price
per person · 50% on booking, the rest at the end of the retreat
What is included
- Screening and preparation call before you arrive
- Four days and three nights at the house, all meals included
- One psilocybin ceremony, with a personal dose
- Integration circles and a day of practitioner reflection
- One integration call afterwards, with further support available
- Access to our Alumni Retreats
A free, unhurried conversation to see whether this retreat is right for you at this point in your work.