Guili Zavaschi MS, LPC
Guili Zavaschi has been practicing psychotherapy and working with psychedelics for over twenty years. He brings the ancient wisdom of plant medicine into the contemporary fields of therapy and somatic work. He has supported a healing process for hundreds of clients and serves as a seasoned leader in the community supervising other psychedelic therapists. Guili was one of the first practitioners to offer above-ground Ketamine sessions through his work at the Integrative Psychiatry Center in Boulder. He has guided nearly a thousand sessions and is certified to offer MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and consultation through MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Science) when it becomes legal. At the heart of his work lies a profound capacity for empathy, deep listening and attunement. Guili was born in Porto Alegre, a city in Southeastern Brazil at the confluence of five rivers. It’s no coincidence that he has become a safe harbor for other people and a port, or portal, to other realms. He grew up in a family that valued science, reason and morality but always felt the tug of longing, a thirst for deeper connection and contact. Even while drinking Coca-Cola and swimming at the beach with his friends, he would still feel unfulfilled, dissatisfied and socially awkward. But a threshold opened in his early teens. He traveled to the countryside town of Caçapava to rock climb for the first time and the world opened up. Scaling 500 million-year-old rock formations and peering out into the vast grasslands, he felt elated and calm. “It was a flow state,” he remembers, “a feeling of being suspended in the present moment. Something in me began to shift.” Guili soon found other ways of entering this timeless, immersive state. Yoga and meditation provided more pathways to peak experiences. Still the passes and valleys remained and Guili found himself at the doorstep of a Gestalt therapist in Santiago, Chile. The therapist’s insightful questions put him in contact with an interior space as wide-open as any of climbing’s peak vistas. What are you feeling right now? What’s happening inside of you? For Guili, Gestalt is about deepening awareness within the context of a therapeutic relationship. It’s about amplifying feelings and becoming awake to whatever is present. This experience led him to pursue an undergraduate degree in Clinical Psychology at Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul and a masters in Counseling Psychology at the University of Wyoming. It was in Chile that Guili first encountered psychedelics. Wachuma is a plant medicine found in the Peruvian highlands that shamans have used for centuries to foster spiritual healing and mystical experience. “I remember tapping into a sense of wisdom, joy and satisfaction,” Guili recounts of his first journey. “It was a powerful state with heightened color and sensory input. I wondered: why are people not talking about this?” He saw the way in which reality was bendable and that existence itself was a miracle we too often overlook. Four years later, Guili was invited to work with a team of curanderos and therapists at Takiwasi, a retreat center in Peru’s Amazonian jungle. He taught climbing and offered psychotherapy sessions which, in conjunction with plant medicine ceremonies, helped clients rehabilitate from addiction. Curanderos would lead ceremonies with ayahuasca and other plant medicine in a ritual space adorned with passion flowers, orchids, chakapa leaves and the fragrance of Agua de Florida. In the two and a half years Guili spent at Takiwasi, he witnessed the profound and positive changes that plant medicine and psychotherapy could occasion when used together. This extensive first hand experience at the confluence of ancient ritual, psychotherapy and psychedelics is one of the things that sets Guili apart in the contemporary psychedelic therapy movement. Clients often share how they feel seen and understood in Guili’s presence. They report feeling safe and accepted, appreciating both his unexpected perspectives on life and his calm, regulating energy. The expanded states of consciousness he has experienced, and facilitates for others, creates an atmosphere of care and connection. When a therapist’s aperture is open a little wider, it invites clients to dilate their consciousness as well. Guili draws on his studies of Gestalt, Mindfulness, Family Therapy, Wilderness Therapy and Somatic Experiencing. As a trilingual therapist, he offers sessions in English, Spanish and Portuguese. He has taught at Naropa University and the Integrative Psychiatry Institute and consults and supervises therapists that are pioneering psychedelic assisted psychotherapy in Brazil, the Integrative Psychiatry Center and at his private practice in Boulder. Guili weaves Somatic Experiencing (SE) into his work with psychedelics. “It can be difficult to titrate intense experiences in the journey space,” Guili reflects, “but SE can support presence and help people find trust, surrender and relaxation. During integration, SE can bring people back to the feeling of the journey; help discharge energy that’s bound in the body; and ease them back to an experience of groundedness after being so wide-open.” Guili uses the tools of somatic psychotherapy to help clients regulate their nervous systems, reconnect with all five senses and come back into their bodies. If people get stuck, he helps them change the channel to a different dimension of experience—from emotion to movement or from image to meaning-making. “Somatic Experiencing is a language that supports experiences that need completion,” Guili explains. “It values going slow, respecting the rhythm of the body and coming into a more holistic way of being. Somatic psychotherapy collaborates beautifully with psychedelics.” Guili is married and has a four-and-a-half year old. His home and family life provides a continual source of balance and groundedness. It helps him practice finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. As they say—after ecstasy, the laundry (and the toddler and the groceries). Call or Text: 307-640-2273 for a free 30 minute consultation |