Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy (PSIP): Deep Nervous System Healing Beyond Words

There are many forms of psychedelic-assisted therapy today, and they can differ widely in how they understand healing and how they work with these states. This page is meant to orient you clearly to what Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy (PSIP) is, how it works, and how it is used in my practice.

PSIP, developed by Saj Razvi, is an experiential, somatic, and relational form of psychotherapy designed to work with trauma that is pre-verbal, dissociative, and stored in the autonomic nervous system.

It is part of the same clinical foundation as the other experiential approaches I use. All work in this model relies on the same core biological mechanism of change—memory reconsolidation, the brain’s natural ability to update emotional learning at its root. What makes PSIP distinct is that it works at the deepest level of the brain, where survival reflexes and dissociation are organized.

How This Approach Differs from Many Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies

Many psychedelic-assisted therapies emphasize:

• Insight

• Meaning-making

• Emotional catharsis

• Or symbolic and transpersonal experiences

PSIP takes a fundamentally different direction. The focus is not on interpretation, storytelling, or peak experience. The focus is on:

• Autonomic nervous system regulation

• Completion of survival responses

• Dissolution of dissociation

• And direct attachment repair through bodily co-regulation

Rather than using psychedelic states primarily to gain perspective or meaning, PSIP uses them to allow the nervous system to access and complete deeply held physiological trauma responses that were never able to resolve at the time they formed.

When Trauma Is Stored in the Survival Brain

Some trauma organizes primarily as emotion and memory. Other trauma organizes as states of the body itself:

• Freezing under stress

• Collapsing into numbness

• Panic that floods without a clear story

• Dissociation or feeling far away

• Chronic hyper-alertness or tension

These patterns often formed early in life or before language. They live in the brain stem and autonomic nervous system as survival reflexes. At the time they developed, they were intelligent. They protected the system when other options were not available.

PSIP is designed to gently bring these survival responses back into motion so they can complete and reorganize, rather than remain locked in place.

What PSIP Looks Like in Practice

PSIP is minimally verbal and deeply body-based. The focus is on what is happening in the nervous system in real time, including:

• Sensation

• Breath

• Impulse

• Tension and release

• Trembling, heat, pressure, waves of activation

Legal medical substances (such as cannabis or ketamine) are used to help the autonomic nervous system soften defensive control, allowing long-blocked survival responses to rise into awareness and complete.

At times, the client may move into deeply regressed, pre-verbal states. At this level, the therapist’s role becomes central. I provide steady, moment-to-moment attunement and co-regulation while the nervous system is highly activated. This creates a direct corrective attachment experience at a bodily level—through pacing, presence, and relational safety rather than through words.

As activation is allowed to complete, the nervous system naturally moves back toward regulation. This reflects a fundamental principle of PSIP:

The autonomic nervous system is wired with a homeostatic, self-correcting capacity—an inner biological intelligence that continually seeks return to balance when defensive control no longer blocks it.

From the perspective of memory reconsolidation, the survival brain is receiving new physiological information about danger, safety, and connection, and updating what it learned long ago.

Preparation for PSIP Work

Because PSIP works at very deep levels of the nervous system, preparation matters. Preparation is about building enough inner capacity to move through strong physiological and emotional activation with support and choice.

This preparation often involves:

• Developing mindfulness and body awareness

• Learning to stay with strong affect without becoming overwhelmed

• Being able to ground and return to daily functioning afterward

• Clarifying personal limits, boundaries, and self-advocacy

• Strengthening the ability to remain relationally connected while activated

• Learning how to ask for and receive support

• Developing a clear map of vulnerable life themes and trauma history

• Understanding one’s coping strategies and learning to pause or inhibit them deliberately when needed

Preparation is not a checklist. It unfolds gradually, at a pace that respects the nervous system.

The Nature of the Work

PSIP is fundamentally a psychological and physiological form of psychotherapy. It works with:

• Survival reflexes

• Dissociation

• Autonomic regulation

• And attachment at a bodily level

Some people may encounter experiences that feel symbolic, existential, or spiritually meaningful. These are integrated with care when they arise. At the same time, the center of gravity of the work remains on:

• Nervous system regulation

• Completion of survival responses

• Direct attachment repair through co-regulation

• And the reorganization of traumatic learning in the brain

Discernment, Intensity, and Transformative Potential

PSIP is powerful work. It can involve high levels of activation, vulnerability, and short-term destabilization. It also holds the potential for profound and lasting transformation, especially when trauma has been stored outside of conscious emotional awareness.

What matters most is honest discernment:

• Is this the right tool for you at this point in your life?

• Do you feel informed about the potential intensity?

• Do you feel adequately supported—internally and relationally—to engage this depth of work?

When the timing is right and the preparation is in place, PSIP can open the door to healing at the deepest layers of the nervous system, where some of our earliest survival patterns were first formed.

How PSIP Is Used in My Practice

In my practice, PSIP is not used in isolation. I integrate it into a broader experiential framework that also includes Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT). Together, these approaches work with:

• Inner psychological organization

• Emotional and attachment experience

• And autonomic nervous system regulation

If you’d like a fuller overview of how I integrate these three approaches, you can explore my main article on my integrated experiential approach on the site.

Important Note

My role in this work is strictly psychotherapeutic. I do not prescribe or administer substances. PSIP is conducted in collaboration with a medical team.