The Case for Surrendering Intentions

A Psychedelic Yogi's Evolution

If we mistrust the ego's ability to solve the problem, why do we trust it to frame the problem-solving process?

This question has haunted my psychedelic healing journey for the past three years. Like most people entering this space, I dutifully set intentions before every ceremony. The practice is everywhere - from clinical trials to ayahuasca circles, everyone talks about the importance of having a clear intention. Set your compass, they say. Know what you're seeking.

But after dozens of journeys with ketamine, ayahuasca, psilocybin, MDMA, and 5-MeO-DMT, I've learned that my conscious intentions were almost always getting in the way.

The Ego Scripts the Trip

A fellow psychedelic journeyer recently shared an insight that hit me like a ton of bricks. "I caught my ego, several times, trying to script my trip!" She laughed about it, describing how in the days before her ceremony, she found herself planning every detail. "When the visuals come, I'll do this. When I'm coming down, I'll think about these things."

I realized my ego had been doing exactly the same thing. In the name of "preparation," I was essentially trying to direct a process that works best when the director steps aside. My intentions weren't neutral wishes - they were ego-driven scripts based on what I thought I needed.

The examples from my own journey are almost comical in their consistency:

I told the shaman my intention was to feel more trust. Aya responded: "In order to feel more trust, you need to be more trustworthy YOURSELF!" The medicine then sent me spinning through memories of having let people down in my narcissistic quest to relieve my own pain.

I declared I wanted to hold my inner child, to send love back through time to that wounded boy. Instead, Aya gave me my abusive father's inner child to cradle, showing me how his brutality stemmed from his own intense emotional repression.

Setting an intention for a ketamine session to find confidence for my career challenges, I was shown instead the inevitability of death and the total folly of this aging man fretting about confidence.

Each time, the medicine held up a mirror to my ego's agenda. The traditional saying "the medicine shows you what you need, not what you want" proved true again and again.

When Words Get in the Way

The problem runs deeper than just misguided intentions. Most intention-setting relies entirely on language - we write them down, speak them aloud, refine the wording. But what if the very wounds we're trying to heal exist in a place before words?

The research on trauma storage in the body suggests this is often the case. As Bessel van der Kolk showed in "The Body Keeps the Score," traumatic experiences - especially from early childhood - are often stored as bodily sensations and emotional impressions, not as verbal memories. A one-year-old doesn't have language to label their distress, but their nervous system encodes it just the same.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz, a trauma psychologist, puts it bluntly: "Words can sometimes interfere with getting in touch with the body." When we stay in our heads analyzing our pain, we might bypass the raw emotions and sensations where trauma actually lives.

This is exactly what I discovered in my own healing journey. For two years, I focused my intentions on processing the violent abuse I experienced in childhood. Trip after trip, I expected to rage, to scream, to finally purge that anger. It never came. Instead, there was a succession of three journeys - with ayahuasca, ketamine, and Bufo - that revealed something my ego had been desperately avoiding: my deepest pain wasn't from the abuse at all. It came from being rejected and abandoned at an even younger age, before I had words to understand it.

My determination to "process abuse trauma" was actually my ego's clever way of shielding me from the deeper, wordless pain of abandonment. The very act of setting that intention was a defense mechanism.

What the Research Shows

The emerging research on psychedelics resonates with my personal experience. While studies confirm that having some kind of meaningful orientation helps outcomes, they also show that rigid, specific intentions can backfire.

A 2025 study found that intentions work best when they're "specific, relevant, flexible, and followed up by integration." The key word there is flexible. The most effective intentions are heartfelt but not rigid - more like "May I find insight into my anxiety" than "I will revisit that specific memory and let it go."

Saj Razvi, a therapist specializing in psychedelic somatic therapy, notes that many people turn to psychedelics after years of talk therapy precisely because "understanding why something happens doesn't necessarily change the symptoms on the ground." With psychedelics, people can finally access and release the raw pain that lives in the body - but only if they don't get too stuck in their heads about it.

Even in traditional ceremonies, the emphasis is on surrender. Ayahuasca facilitators consistently say things like "Trust the medicine and allow her to work with you in her way" or "Keep it simple. Surrender... That's all you can really do. Allow what unfolds to unfold."

The Evolution to Yogic Intentions

So where does this leave us? Should we abandon intention-setting entirely?

Not quite. What I've discovered is a different kind of intention - one that doesn't come from the ego's agenda but from a deeper wisdom. These days, whether journeying with ketamine or Bufo, I set no personal intentions. No resolve to retrieve specific memories, work through particular traumas, or fix identified problems.

Instead, I set what you might call universal or yogic intentions. Before a ketamine session, I might say: "May I settle at the very bottom of my breath and let go." That's it. No reference to my personal struggles, no roadmap for what should happen.

This approach mirrors traditions like Tibetan Dream Yoga, where the intention is simply "May I recognize the dream state" - not a personal goal but a movement toward greater awareness.

My current practice has evolved to its simplest form: I intend only to unite body, breath, and mind. Through cycles of awareness and returning - becoming aware, returning to body/breath/mind, becoming aware again - I practice this union as the medicine works.

The results are very clear. With no personal agenda, no script for the trip, I get the best outcomes. Emotions burst forth when they need to. New insights arrive without being forced. Love and forgiveness bloom where there was once a fortress of repression. The universe unfolds its own plot line, far more beautiful and challenging than anything my ego could have scripted.

A Practice for Your Journey

If you're preparing for a psychedelic healing journey, consider this approach:

Set an intention if you feel called to, but make it universal rather than personal. "May I be open to what needs healing" or "May I trust the process" or simply "May I receive."

Prepare your body, breath, and mind through whatever practices resonate - yoga, breathwork, meditation. Think of this as preparing the vessel rather than planning the voyage.

During the journey, when you notice your ego trying to direct things, gently return to your breath, to your body, to the present moment. Let the medicine or your deep wisdom lead the way.

Trust that healing will happen in exactly the way it needs to, even if it looks nothing like what you expected. Especially if it looks nothing like what you expected.

The ego that got us into our pain is poorly equipped to navigate us out. Sometimes the most powerful intention we can set is the intention to stop setting intentions - to finally get out of our own way and let the deeper healing begin.

Closing Thoughts

This isn't about having no direction or purpose in your psychedelic work. It's about recognizing that the part of us that sets intentions - the linguistic, planning, controlling ego - might be the very thing that needs to step aside for true healing to occur.

My journey from elaborate personal intentions to simple yogic ones has been humbling. Each time I thought I knew what I needed, I was shown how little I actually understood. Each time I surrendered control, I received and was grateful.

I don't claim this approach is right for everyone. Intention-setting clearly helps many people, and different approaches work for different stages of healing. But if you've found yourself frustrated by trips that don't follow your script, or if you sense your intentions might be coming from a defended place, consider experimenting with surrender.

Psychedelic experiences may be impossible to understand but they always provide opportunities for transformation in the depths of the body and breath. Rather than problem-solving, focus on letting go!