Why Women’s Leadership Matters in the Psychedelic Movement

The psychedelic movement has long been painted with the faces of male figureheads, yet its foundation has been nurtured by the emotional stewardship and resilience of women.

Whether working as healers, therapists, guides, facilitators, thought leaders, researchers, or advocates, women have been leading individuals, communities, and even entire cultures through psychedelic healing for generations. This is highlighted beautifully in the book Swimming in the Sacred, which features insight and wisdom from 15 women elders across medicine traditions.

Rachael Harris PhD, author of Swimming in the Sacred — Rachael Harris PhD, author of *Swimming in the Sacred: Wisdom from the Psychedelic Underground*

These women have collectively accrued hundreds of years of experience guiding profound entheogenic journeys. Yet they remain underground, unseen, and unrecognized – an appropriate metaphor for women’s contributions in the psychedelic space.

Now, the hype cycle around psychedelics is leveling out, and we have an opportunity to usher in a new phase of this journey – one that prioritizes ethics, relationality, and community-centered healing. At Elemental Psychedelics (EP), we believe that having women at the helm is crucial to this new era while simultaneously dismantling the very structures that perpetuate this imbalance.

Dismantling Patriarchal Systems

For too long, psychedelic spaces have been dominated by patriarchal leadership, mirroring broader societal structures. This has often manifested in the emergence of guru-like figureheads who focus on hyper-individualistic journeys and a “heroic dose” mentality over communal healing.

While these influential men undoubtedly helped popularize psychedelics, this model also has its limitations. It’s founded on and takes advantage of power imbalances and has too easily created situations of abuse and ethical missteps (see such horror stories outlined by Jules Evans on his blog, Ecstatic Integration).

To disrupt these patterns, we must start to center the contributions of women leaders (beyond venture capital raised and compounds patented) and demonstrate what it truly means to be women-led – and how this approach benefits all.

Women Who Embody Ethical, Community-Centered Psychedelic Work

Many women have been shaping the current psychedelic renaissance. Below are just a few of the incredible women who are deeply committed to ethics, humility, and relationality and who inspire us at Elemental:

Kylea Taylor: Revolutionizing ethics in psychedelic caregiving with her seminal The Ethics of Caring, Taylor’s frameworks for self-examination have become foundational for EP’s own curricula.

Micah Stover: A trauma therapist and ceremony leader who balances deep expertise with humility, Stover shows us how to hold power responsibly while remaining endlessly curious.

Koelle Simpson: With more than 15 years of experience leading sacred medicine ceremonies, Simpson integrates equine therapy and plant medicine – exemplifying the holistic, multifaceted approach championed at EP.

Tirzah Firestone: In The Receiving, Firestone emphasizes spirituality through everyday acts – a reminder that feminine wisdom weaves through all aspects of life, from cooking to connecting with the land.

Hanifa Nayo Washington: Washington is a social justice pioneer in the psychedelic space. She is dedicated to expanding access to psychedelic care for marginalized communities through her work as a transformational healer, valued-based leader, and sacred ritualist.

Laura Mae Northrup: In her book Radical Healership, psychotherapist Northrup addresses the complexities of running a healing practice in a late-stage capitalist culture and shares guidance on how to build a business rooted in ethics, equity, and integrity – all values we hold dear at Elemental.

Marcela Ot’alora: Psychotherapist and installation artist Ot’alora is dedicated to helping others heal trauma through connecting to their true essence and creative expression, and has been a key figure in advancing MAPS’ research on MDMA for PTSD.

What Does it Really Mean to be Women-Led?

At Elemental, we pride ourselves on being one of the few fully women-led, founded, and operated licensing mushroom facilitator programs in the country. But what does this really mean?

Why do we highlight our organization as women-led, and how does this impact our program and the community we’re co-creating and supporting?

For us, being“women-led” means:

Building and leading from a place of receptivity. Honoring intuition, deep listening for what is ours to do in each new moment and our gifts to bring forth. From a place of receptivity, we lean into feeling, sensing, and connecting with the wisdom of the body and unseen realms.

Honoring the slow pace of true embodied learning and change. We are not chasing after rocket fuel-type experiences to blast us off into a How to Change Your Mind journey of ego dissolution. Rather, lasting change moves at its own pace. There is great wisdom in taking each piece as it comes and doing the slow work of discovering and embodying the person you are becoming.

Being champions of ethics and safety. We recognize that many people have been harmed in psychedelic spaces – women, in particular, have experienced sexual assault, manipulation, coercion, and various other sorts of abuse at the hands of teachers, gurus, and leaders in psychedelic spaces. As women leaders in the educational space, we strive to build a strong ground of ethics and safety for communities of practitioners to stand on and use to hold one another accountable.

Not rejecting our power, but rather asking: how can we do power differently? Strong leadership means that we are at the helm, while not asserting power as a show of authority or power over another. We hold and share power together, in and with community.

Centering community and doing our work within a communal container. Instead of the lone wolf archetype, as women leaders, we value collaboration and community building. We recognize the power of shared experiences and collective wisdom. From this place, we create well-boundaried and supportive spaces for the exploration of inner and unseen worlds where we can be held and witnessed in community.

Elemental centers these feminine values by creating strong educational containers for deepening our sense of ethics, our relationships with community and the natural world, and our social positions within broader psychedelic, plant medicine, and anti-Drug War movements.

As founders, we find ourselves continuously grappling with our own power and privilege and addressing our internalized biases with those who carry other and differing intersectional identities.

The strong voices and confidence of women leaders are balanced with deep humility and a willingness to be downright incorrect. We are constantly redefining and reconsidering our perspectives and those embedded into our curriculum. At Elemental, we rarely hold the “don’t fix it if it ain’t broken” mentality. Our creations are dynamic, living things that we strive to remain responsive to as new conversations and paradigms come into the psychedelic and social justice zeitgeist.

Putting Women-Led into Practice

So, what does all of this look like in practice?

Here’s how we’re centering a community- and feminine-led approach at Elemental:

Holding free community gatherings that promote creative expression and intuitive movement through activities like free-form dance.
Offering mushroom facilitator programs with built-in retreat weekends aimed at in-person community building and meaningful real-life connections.
Co-creating our retreats and training weekends to meet the moment and respond to the unique needs of each student group, as opposed to protocol-based agendas.
Encouraging each person in our training programs to sink into their own pace of embodied learning and to trust themselves to bring forth their unique offerings on top of a strong ethical foundation for practice.
Recognizing and naming the power dynamics that impact the learning space.
Seeking awareness of the larger cultural and historical context and dynamics of cultural syncretism in our training curriculum.
Encouraging deeper relationships with mushroom medicine, the animate world, and unseen realms within our training programs.
Developing peer feedback circles where practitioners feel safe to learn, grow, and be accountable together as a community of practitioners.

Stepping into Leadership in the Psychedelic Space

For anyone who feels called to lead in this field, we offer these guiding principles:

Tap into the power of the collective. Form alliances and mentor networks with other, similarly-minded psychedelic professionals that reinforce collaboration over competition.
Show up for community. Find people who you can witness and who can witness you, truly and honestly, in your ongoing work with psychedelic medicines.
Adopt an unwavering commitment to ethics. Commit to ongoing self-reflection and addressing power dynamics to create safe, accountable spaces.
Embody your teachings. Cultivate your intuition and mind-body connection to tap into your body’s wisdom. Adopt a practice of deep listening that keeps you responsive to what’s right in front of you.
Be in awe of Mystery. No matter how much training and skill you have, there is a greater Mystery in mushroom medicine that we can never fully know or master. Remember to be in awe and reverence.
Stay humble, always. Understand that the journey of learning never ends, and remain open to changing your mind and your methods.

It’s time for psychedelic therapy and education to move beyond patriarchal systems that perpetuate dysfunctional relationships with power and create harm. By centering feminine ways of knowing, listening, and holding power with, we can build a psychedelic future that lives up to the transformation we seek through this movement.

Do you feel the call to be part of this movement? Take a look at the trainings we offer at Elemental Psychedelics and harness your gifts as a safe and ethical psychedelic spaceholder.