Meet Dori Lewis | Licensed Professional Counselor & Psychedelic Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dori Lewis and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dori, what is the most important factor behind your success?
The most important factor behind my success is being authentic. By being deeply connected with who I am and what I uniquely bring to the field of psychedelic medicine and mental health care, I have been able to attract people, both clients and other professionals, who are drawn to my perspective in offering this work. This enhances the success of my clients, the providers that learn from me and those who work with me because we are connecting to the work in a similar way and therefore aligning with the language and frequency of our higher selves/inner healing intelligence.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My offering to our community of Northern Colorado is in the mental health sector. I started my practice as a way to shift away from traditional mental health care and offer my clients a more transpersonal, and depth approach to healing. I wanted to go beyond offering tools to manage symptoms. I wanted to offer people the opportunity to connect with a deeper sense of value and power in their lives through accessing their inherent value as a spiritual being having a human experience. I wanted to help people give themselves permission to be free from their self-created limitations and help them see themselves as deserving beings with the power to create new stories about what life is about and how they could use their own inner well of support and power to create the lives they were yearning for, rather than looking outside themselves for things to “fix” them. I knew that for me personally, my way to this path was through psycho-spiritual practice and learning. From my perspective, this could be achieved in different ways; meditation, reading and somatic practices AND with intentional use of psychedelics. At the time, ketamine was what we could offer legally for psychedelic therapy so, after attending a training, receiving supervision and mentorship as well as having countless personal experiences with the substance, I began to offer KAP (ketamine assisted psychotherapy) in addition to providing existential/transpersonal counseling services based in strong therapeutic relationships with clients in the spirit of authenticity and feminist principles of equity, while avoiding a top-down relational model within the therapeutic relationship. From here, my practice took off. No one that I knew was blending this type of deep and long-term psychotherapy with ketamine. I began to be overwhelmed with client needs and the need for this work from the community just kept growing so I brought on two counselors to join me and it kept growing from there. Today, I run a practice that mirrors the work I do with clients. I aim to create a community of providers that make choices together in the spirit of a collective and aim to value the voices of all my colleagues. I also only bring on providers who are actively doing their own work to grow and evolve with use of psychedelics and other practices and lifestyle choices. What I have learned and still am learning is how to energetically run my practice with divine masculine and feminine energy in the spirit of unity. I have found that running things entirely as a collective makes it very hard to move forward and create things in a timely manner. If everyone in the room has to agree on things it can be difficult to arrive at decisions and move forward with creation. I’ve intuited that there can be a balance between there being leadership that makes final decisions and moves things forward, while creating an organization that involves and includes the values, voices and input from all the people who are involved in creating it. I am learning how to do leadership differently than what I have been shown in our culture; top-down, triangular systems with a few at the top making all the choices that dictate the work of the many at the bottom. I am learning, with great humility, that the ability to bend, change, accept criticism without defensiveness and avoid rigidity in my thinking while openly listening the wisdom of the people who work for me, makes me wiser and better equipped to lead a community that feels empowered and valued. I want the world to know that progress does not require hierarchy, that we can do so much more when we listen to those around us and recognize our limitations and that power does not need to look like power over others, it must be power with others. We are so much more powerful and creative when we integrate the voices of many people from different backgrounds, skillsets, cultures, ways of being; then we create a more integrated vision that can reach more people while embracing their uniqueness.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would start with cooking them a breakfast made out of local food; I get eggs from a friend down the street or Jodar Farms, veggies from my local Native Hill farm stand, honey from a few bee-keeper friends and spices from Savory Spice Shop and oils from our local shops in town. I love that we have such fresh, local foods available to use here in Colorado. Then, I’d take us on a hike at Lory state park, I love the Well Gulch trail. After a hike, we’d rest. I think rest is so important and necessary and stillness is such a gift. After some personal chill time, we’d walk in Old Town and see the shops, and enjoy dinner and drinks at the best restaurant in town, Little on Mountain. Then, head home and make a fire in the backyard (season depending) and play games (What do you meme, or Taboo).

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I have been supported by some incredible women in the field who have included me in training opportunities, joined my practice, believed in me and joined with me on some incredible projects. I would like to shoutout Brianna Bendixsen, Shannon Hughes, Katie Klumb, Joy Gribble, Kristen Genzano, and Sarah Craycraft. These women have lifted me up time and time again professionally and personally.

Website: https://www.reflectivehealing.com/

Instagram: @reflective_healing

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dori-g-lewis-5578b763/

Image Credits
Lumen Creative Co.