Deliver mindfulness and grounding exercises

The manuals converge on the use of mindfulness and grounding as stabilising supports before and during psychedelic sessions. Across the extracts, they recommend present-focused attention, reduced avoidance, and techniques for managing distress or anxiety, including deep breathing, mindful awareness, grounding, and progressive muscle relaxation. They also place these skills in both preparation and the session itself, with one source extending their use into the acute and post-acute phases.

The manuals differ in how specifically they describe the exercises and the setting in which they are delivered. The ayahuasca protocols emphasise teaching mindfulness in group format before administration and using grounding to support participants through challenging experiences, while the psilocybin trial gives concrete examples such as a five-minute breath-focused meditation, a body scan, naming objects in the room, describing their function, and using a small security object if helpful. The ayahuasca sources also explicitly link these practices to reducing avoidance and stabilising arousal, whereas the psilocybin source frames them more around attention, present-moment awareness, and bodily sensation.