FAQ

No, and it's important to be honest about this distinction.

Although ACER Integration was founded by Dr. Rosalind Watts, a clinical psychologist, ACER Integration is an educational and community programme, not a therapeutic service. It does not diagnose, treat, or provide clinical care.

ACER works best alongside, not instead of, appropriate therapeutic support. If you are navigating significant mental health challenges, we encourage you to maintain your relationship with a qualified professional while participating in the community.

We will always be honest during the application process if we feel ACER is not the right fit for someone at a particular moment. Our community functions well because its members are ready to be present not just to their own process but to others' as well.

Anyone joining the ACER Integration community must agree and acknowledge that the community is not providing health care, medical or nutritional therapy services, or attempting to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any physical, mental or emotional issue, disease or condition.

Always seek the advice of your own medical provider and/or mental health provider regarding any questions or concerns you have about your specific health before implementing any recommendations or suggestions from our materials.

If you have or suspect that you have a medical or mental health problem, contact your own medical provider or mental health provider expediently.

No. ACER is not a programme that requires psychedelic experience.

Psychedelic substances play no part in the ACER cycle, and you are not required to have any experience with them. The community includes people who have had significant psychedelic experiences and people who have not. What we all share is a desire to live with more depth, connection, and intentionality.

What matters is whether you have had experiences, of any kind, that have opened something in you and whether you are genuinely ready to work with that in community.

Please note: many in the community have engaged with psychedelic substances, and you will likely encounter people speaking about this. We ask that everyone in ACER remain open-minded and non-judgemental of others' journeys.

You can apply at any time. Applications are open year-round, and the community itself opens twice a year, in April and October.

The process involves:

1. Completing the application form, which asks you to share something about yourself and why you're drawn to ACER.

2. A review by the ACER team — we read every application carefully.

3. For some applicants, a discovery call with the team to talk things through.

4. Confirmation of your place and payment of the programme fee.

We do sometimes decline applications not to be gatekeepers, but because the community's safety and depth depend on the people in it being genuinely ready.

If we don't think the timing is right, we'll always say so kindly and, where possible, suggest what might be more appropriate.

We look forward to meeting you soon!

A few things set ACER apart:

• Nature as a guide, not a backdrop. Each month in the ACER year is shaped by a different tree — Yew, ]Willow, Oak, Elder, and others. These are not decorative metaphors. They are archetypes that provide genuine frameworks for understanding cycles, rootedness, resilience, and transformation. Nature doesn't rush. Neither does ACER.

• Continuity over intensity. Many programmes offer a peak experience like a retreat, a workshop, a ceremony. ACER Integration offers something rarer: a year of sustained, structured engagement with your own process, in community with others doing the same. Transformation is not an event. It is a practice.

• Founded in rigorous research. Ros spent years as clinical lead for Imperial College London's landmark psilocybin trial and developed the Watts Connectedness Scale, a validated measure of the psychological shift that can follow profound experiences. ACER is built on a deep understanding of what actually supports lasting change.

• Trauma-informed, embodied, relational. The ACER approach holds space for the nervous system, not just the mind. It values embodiment alongside reflection, and community accountability alongside personal insight. Breathwork, dance, singing are just a few of the ways we integrate through the body. 

• Global and genuinely diverse. ACER members come from across the world. The community is intentionally international, because connection across difference is itself a kind of integration.

Because we are not designed to do any of this alone.

Western culture tends to treat inner work as a private matter, something you do with a therapist, in a journal, or on a cushion. And while all of those practices have value, they miss something essential: the experience of being witnessed, challenged, and accompanied by others who are navigating similar territory.

Research increasingly supports what Indigenous and contemplative traditions have always known: that communal practices, shared ritual, the telling of stories, mutual accountability, and being truly seen by others are integral to psychological and spiritual transformation, not optional extras.

In community, your insights meet reality. The things you noticed in solitude are tested, deepened, and made more durable through relationship.

In ACER integration, community is not a backdrop to the integration work. It is the integration work.

Yes. ACER Integration offers a range of free resources including our Info Pack, videos, and social media content to help people get a feel for the community and approach before joining. We recommend joining us for a live event!

This community has been designed for those wanting to connect more deeply with the self, others and nature. To work through individual life circumstances collectively.

It’s for anyone who wishes to actively and intentionally process experiences in life which have led to a profound shift in worldview and emotion, including life events such as bereavement, illness, career change, and also 'self development' events such as engaging in meditation, psychedelic therapy, and many other holistic health approaches.

Integration circles and peer support groups serve an important function; they offer a space to share experiences with others who understand, often without charge and without structure.

However, ACER Integration is something more sustained. It provides a year-long arc with intentional curriculum, guided practices, trained facilitation, and the continuity of a fixed cohort. Rather than dropping into a circle when you feel the need, you move through a structured journey with the same people over time.

The depth of change that ACER supports tends to require that continuity. The community doesn't just witness your experience, it becomes part of how you integrate it.

Integration is the process of making meaning from experiences that have shifted something in you and finding ways to carry that shift into your everyday life.

The word “integration” is most commonly associated with psychedelics, but the need for integration arises wherever genuine transformation has occurred: a bereavement, a serious illness, a spiritual experience, a retreat, the end of a long relationship, or a period of deep inner work. Anything that changes how you see yourself or the world asks to be integrated.

ACER Integration uses the lens of nature to take participants beyond what they know to contextualise and embody complex emotions and experiences.

We think of integration not as a task to complete but as an ongoing practice of returning to what you've noticed, to who you're becoming, and to the connections that sustain that becoming. It is less about analysing an experience and more about living it forward.

You can read more about it here.

There is no fixed timeline, and anyone who offers one is probably oversimplifying.

The immediate aftermath of a significant experience, the first days and weeks, often requires gentle tending: rest, reduced stimulation, journaling, time in nature. This early phase is about stabilising, not analysing.

But the deeper work of integration — where insights become values, where values become choices, where choices reshape a life tends to unfold over months and years.

Many people find that an experience they had two or three years ago is still revealing itself to them in new ways.

This is part of why ACER is structured as a year-long cycle.

One conversation, one retreat, one therapy session cannot hold the entirety of a genuine transformation. Integration needs time, rhythm, and continued companionship.

The year follows the ACER Integration Cycle — a 13-month journey structured around the four pillars: Accept, Connect, Embody, Restore.

Each month is held by a different tree archetype, with its own themes, practices, and invitations. Some months ask you to rest. Others ask you to face something. Some are about community; others about solitude. The rhythm mirrors nature itself. The process is not linear, not relentlessly upward, but cyclic and alive.

Within each month you'll have access to guided content, breathwork, live community gatherings, and a structure for personal reflection. The live elements create rhythm and accountability; the self-paced elements honour the fact that integration cannot be forced.

You move through the year with the same cohort of people within the wider group, where you can build real continuity of relationships, which is rare in online communities and essential to the work.

You can get more info here.

Transformation is not always comfortable, and we don't pretend otherwise.

ACER is built with trauma-informed principles throughout. The community structures are designed to provide genuine support, as opposed to just positivity and encouragement. We want to provide the kind of steady, honest presence that can hold someone when things are difficult.

However, if you experience significant distress, there are limits to what a peer-led community like ACER can hold.

We will always support you in accessing appropriate professional care outside of the ACER community. ACER does not replace therapy and cannot provide crisis support. We take seriously our responsibility to signpost when someone needs more than community can offer.

The application process exists partly for this reason. We don’t want to be exclusive, but we need to ensure that everyone who joins is ready to be present for themselves and for others.

Yes. While ACER is most commonly associated with psilocybin integration given Ros's research background, the frameworks and community are relevant to integration after any substance that opens the door to deeper self-awareness, including ketamine, MDMA, ayahuasca, and others.

ACER Integration also supports people integrating experiences that have nothing to do with substances: meditation or breathwork openings, therapy breakthroughs, near-death experiences, intense grief, spiritual emergence, or simply a period of life that changed everything.

Possibly, yes.The world is one big psychedelic experience at the moment, so it’s OK if you’re simply wanting somewhere to share this human experience we’re all having. 

Many people arrive at ACER knowing they've been changed by something. A period of spiritual searching, years of therapy that have opened more than they've closed, or a psychedelic experience that felt significant but remains unresolved without being able to name exactly what they're integrating.

ACER doesn't require you to arrive with a clear narrative. What it does ask is that you're genuinely ready to slow down, be in community, and let the year do what it does. The structure tends to find people where they are and work with that.

If you're unsure, the most useful thing you can do is book a discovery call.

The ACER team is always happy to talk to prospective members, and that conversation usually clarifies things one way or another.