15 Years Shaping the Psychedelic Field

I’m Sara Gael, MA, LPC, a psychedelic therapist, educator, and facilitator who has spent more than 15 years working across psychedelic research, therapy, professional training, harm reduction, and public education.

I spent a decade at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), where I served as Director of Harm Reduction and led the work of the Zendo Project.

I served as a therapist in Phase 2 and 3 clinical trials of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD, a Lead Educator and Associate Supervisor for Lykos Therapeutics, and as the Founding Course Director for the Integrative Psychiatry Institute’s Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Training.

The Foundations of Psychedelic Stewardship

Over the course of my career, I have spent 10,000+ hours supporting people during psychedelic experiences. I’ve trained more than 8,000 individuals, including peer supporters, psychedelic therapists and facilitators, and first responders.

Again and again, my work has brought me back to the same question:

How do we best engage with psychedelics so that personal healing translates into meaningful, lasting change in how we live, relate, and contribute to our communities and the world?

I founded Psychedelic Stewardship to help answer that question. Drawing on decades of experience supporting others, we provide the knowledge and resources to help you navigate psychedelic healing with greater clarity, confidence, and care.

I believe psychedelics can be powerful catalysts for healing and transformation, but that realizing that potential requires more than the experience itself. It requires thoughtful engagement, preparation, support, and attention to how what we learn during these experiences actually takes root in our lives, relationships, and communities.

A Little More About Me

I live in Boulder, CO, on the ancestral lands of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples, with my husband, daughter, and our canine creature companion.

I come from mixed white, Hispano, and Genízaro ancestry and was raised in Northern New Mexico.

For more than 25 years, I have cultivated a relationship with psychedelic medicines across community, ceremonial, and healing contexts. Along the way, I have been blessed with extraordinary mentors, teachers, and lineage keepers whose wisdom continues to guide and inform my work and life.

I am an animist through and through and believe that psychedelics hold their own unique intelligence. I seek to bridge spirit, soul, and science in psychedelic work, honoring multiple ways of knowing and a multi-gnosis approach. My work is deeply informed by transpersonal and liberation psychology, existential psychology, ancestral healing, the natural world, and my own healing path.