The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
Rumi
I Walk the Path I Guide Others Through.
I know what it's like to build a life that looks exactly right from the outside and feel completely hollow on the inside.
For years I climbed. Corporate ladder, executive titles, the right accolades. I was good at it. And I hated it. Behind the polished resume was someone burned out, angry, scared, and quietly drinking his way through the discomfort of a life that didn't fit.
In 2018, a Traumatic Brain Injury cracked everything open. At my lowest point, I thought about ending my life. I want to name that plainly, because I know I'm not the only one who has stood at that edge, and I want whoever is reading this to know that I understand what it costs to keep going when everything in you wants to stop.
What followed was not a quick recovery. It was a reckoning. With everything I thought I knew about success, identity, purpose, and what it means to be alive.
Plant medicine found me in that reckoning. My first psychedelic experience didn't give me answers. It gave me something more valuable. It showed me that the distance I felt from myself, from others, from something larger, was not permanent. That I had never actually been alone. I just hadn't been ready to hear it.
Where the Real Work Began
That moment collapsed everything I had built in my head and dropped it into my heart. And that is where the real work began.
I left alcohol behind. I began healing my marriage. I contacted my father for the first time in nineteen years. I hired coaches, did shadow work, sat with trauma I had never had language for. I found a spiritual path that holds me. I kept going deeper, not because it was easy, but because I finally understood that my suffering wasn't happening to me. It was happening for me.
That understanding is the foundation of everything I bring to this work.
What I Had to Unlearn
The truths that changed everything
I had to unlearn that I was a mistake. I was born out of wedlock, abandoned by my father before I arrived. I spent decades living from that wound without knowing it. The truth I found, slowly, painfully, and with help, is that I am not a mistake. And neither are you.
I had to unlearn that suffering was something to escape. I used alcohol, work, and distraction. None of it worked. What I know now is that the numbing only prolonged the suffering. The doorway through was always the thing I was running from.
I had to unlearn that I was alone. The truth is that Source, however you understand it, has never left. I have never been alone. I just wasn't ready to feel that yet.
These aren't beliefs I adopted from a book. They are things I know in my body, because I've lived my way into them. That's what I mean when I say I walk the path I guide others through.
Who I Work With
Post-crisis. Pre-breakthrough.
You may be professionally successful. Respected. Productive. And quietly exhausted in a way you can't fully explain to the people around you.
Something has cracked open. Maybe it was a ceremony, a loss, a relationship that finally broke, or just a moment of stillness where the truth got too loud to ignore. You've seen something real. You know you can't go back. But you don't yet know how to go forward.
You're not broken. You're not lost. You're in the liminal space between the life you've outgrown and the one that's asking to be built. That is exactly where this work lives.
I work with people who are ready to stop performing and start becoming. People who sense that the answers aren't out there, and are finally willing to look in. People who are post-crisis but pre-breakthrough, standing at the threshold with enough courage to take one more step.
What I Stand For
Healing is already within you
I believe healing is already within you. The path to it is sacred.
I believe plant medicine, when approached with intention and support, can accelerate the kind of healing that takes years to find otherwise. And I believe that acceleration requires preparation, integration, and someone to walk beside you through all of it.
I believe suffering, when met with presence and courage, becomes fuel for freedom rather than a reason to numb.
I believe people aren't broken or lost. They've just forgotten who they are.
I believe that when one person heals, the people around them feel it. In their families, their relationships, their communities.
That ripple is why this work matters.
How I Work
A peer, not a guru
I don't have a rigid process. I have a presence.
My work draws from somatic coaching, mindfulness, parts work, and psychedelic preparation and integration. I'm trauma-informed, which means I understand how trauma lives in the body and shapes behavior. I know when to go deeper and when to wait. I know when to refer out.
Sessions can involve deep listening, somatic inquiry, breathwork, reflective dialogue, or simply sitting in silence long enough for what's real to surface. I bring tools tailored to what you actually need, not a framework you have to fit yourself into.
When a client is preparing for ceremony, we build the inner conditions and resources they'll need before they ever sit down. When they return, we do the work of making sure what the medicine revealed doesn't fade back into daily life.
I am not the expert in your life. You are. My job is to help you remember what you already know, and to hold you accountable to living from it.
What clients say most often: "I've never said that out loud to anyone before."
That's not a technique. That's the container.
Credentials
Training and certification
- Professional Certified Coach (PCC), International Coaching Federation
- Psychedelic Integration and Transformation Coaching, Being True to You
- Psychedelic Trip Sitter Training, Being True to You
- Somatic Trauma Healing 101, The Initiate's Path
- Integral Coaching, New Ventures West
Let's Talk
If something here resonates, I’d love to hear where you are on your journey.
Book a free discovery call, or explore Psychedelic Prep & Integration or Beyond Integration.
You don’t have to go back to who you were.
Preparing, integrating, or evolving... I'll walk with you.
Thinking About a Psychedelic Ceremony?
Before You Say "Yes," a free guide to help you decide with confidence.
Meet Kris
Psychedelic Prep & Integration Support with Kris Russell
Kris Russell PCC, works with people who are preparing for a profound psychedelic experience, integrating one, or ready to do something lasting with what they learned.
His work blends somatic coaching, mindfulness practices, parts work, and practical behavior change to help clients move from insight to embodiment, from knowing what needs to change to actually living differently.
His clients often say, "I've never said that out loud to anyone before."
And that's exactly the point.
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