I’ve been contemplating the “lasting effects” of peak experiences or really of any healing modality, and when I was directly asked this question the other week, I figured it was time to put this out there.

Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, or maybe because I have the lived experience of being wrong so. many. times, then learning from others or other experiences that there is a more helpful way to view things, that I feel the need to put a big disclaimer on this whole post. This is simply how these things are sitting for me now. I am certain that researchers and plenty of others have written more eloquently and more informedly, and I would love to hear about them! These are just the pieces that are bubbling up to the top after stewing for quite some time in my life.

There are so many factors that determine the length of effect of any experience or insight, but here are at least three that have impacted my personal experience. 

1. How intense the experience was.
   • I find that the more intense the experience, the longer its effects linger within me. For some people, having a peak experience in any healing modality report that they are nearly instantaneously changed, and that that change remains over time without having to expend any energy or do any more intentional work. You don’t have to dig very deep to find stories of people who have had huge sustained changes in their lives after one experience with plant medicines, or following a huge insight in connectedness at a meditation retreat. This has not been my reality (see #3 below, after #2 below).
2. How big the disconnect or difference is between this experience or insight and my daily experiences.
   • If I walk into a space that has the opposite energy of what I experienced in that healing space, then of course the effects take that much more effort to maintain.
   • The resistance offered by dissonant living situations can deplete the energy of the experience or insight.
   • When I lived in Cambodia, I had such intense experiences during my repeated 10-day silent vipassana meditation retreats. Between and after the retreats, I maintained a solid 2-hour a day meditation practice (this is intense long-term integration!) and lived what is perhaps the most guided year of my life. And then I moved back to the United States and expected to just slide back into the life I’d left the year before. I mean, what could’ve possibly changed that much in one year, right? Me. That’s what. But I tried to shoehorn myself back into this incredibly dissonant life, and in the process lost much of the beautiful daily lived experiences I had experienced before. With the reintroduction of all my American responsibilities and societal expectations, I simply didn’t have the energy to maintain that level of resistance now coming my way in the face of what I actually knew from my recently lived, bodily experiences to be true.
   • I want to caution both you and myself that this isn’t necessarily considered a “negative” thing to experience this disconnect. It can be a huge lesson about what changes may be emerging as necessary or helpful, when supported.
3. How much I keep it in my conscious mind, and put structures in place, often requiring actions, reminders, and support.
   • For me, this currently looks like sitting each morning and reading some of the major insights I’ve had in the past year and then asking some key questions guided from those insights. Most days I ask what my heart wants, and often also ask what the next best step is to help me walk that path. It also means scheduling an appointment with a counselor or taking some other supportive action when I know I just don’t fully have it in me.
   • This, to me, feels like “the work.” It’s this long-term integration that I have found to be the least sexy of any of the work that needs to get done, yet this is exactly where I am finding the actual growth and change that I was seeking. Not in the moment of that beautiful, intense moment of insight, but in the slow, day-to-day actions. I admit that I hate it at times, and rage against the glacial pace of some things. Acceptance and patience are not currently my strength areas! But since my lived experience has taught me that without long-term intentionality surrounding integration, I fall back into patterns that have been established without any sense of intentionality, I need to keep coming back to this.

This long-term integration will undoubtedly continue to be my lesson for life seasons to come, choosing some intentionality surrounding action in all areas of my life, including multiple aspects of my self (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) and my life.