Brendan Caldwell, MA, LPC, NMCF

• Psychotherapist and Somatic Trauma Specialist

• Associate Clinical Director at the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness

• Training Coordinator for the NMHA Psilocybin Facilitator Training Program

• Educator with the Medicinal Mindfulness Academy and Psychedelic Sitters School

• Psychedelic Guide at the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness

• Natural Medicine Clinical Facilitator (NMCF.0000052)

Specialties

• Trauma-informed psychedelic-assisted therapy

• Cannabis-assisted psychedelic therapy

• Ketamine-assisted psychedelic therapy

• Psilocybin-assisted psychedelic therapy

• Psychedelic preparation, integration, and harm reduction

• Somatic trauma therapy

• Internal Family Systems and parts work

• Kink-aware sex therapy

• Queer-allied sexuality and gender issues

• Spiritual care and exploration

• Major life transitions and identity development

• Existential concerns, meaning, purpose, and mortality

• Men’s work and positive masculinity

Consider Working With Me If You…

• Feel called to psychedelic medicines but want experienced, trauma-informed guidance

• Want to heal from trauma while maintaining choice, agency, and respect for the protective parts of your system

• Are female-identified or genderqueer and are open to a corrective experience with a safe male-identified counselor

• Are exploring concerns related to intimacy, sex, sexuality, gender, or relationships

• Understand that healing is not always dramatic, comfortable, or linear, but feel drawn to engage the process with intention and care

• Are struggling with questions of purpose, meaning, mortality, or a terminal diagnosis

• Have had a frightening, destabilizing, disappointing, or difficult psychedelic experience in the past

I welcome people from a wide range of identities, relationships, and communities. My practice is affirming of LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, polyamorous, consensually non-monogamous, and kink-identified clients. I understand that genuine inclusivity requires more than welcoming language, and I remain committed to cultural humility, continued learning, and examining how power and social context enter the therapeutic relationship.

Education and Clinical Background

I am a Licensed Professional Counselor and Natural Medicine Clinical Facilitator in Colorado. I hold a master’s degree in Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Mental Health Counseling from Naropa University and have completed advanced training in Mindfulness-Based Psychedelic Therapy through the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness.

My clinical approach draws from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, mindfulness-based psychotherapy, attachment theory, polyvagal theory, transpersonal counseling, and multicultural and systemic perspectives. I have also received training in Somatic-Concentric Sex Therapy, psychedelic harm reduction, psilocybin facilitation, psychedelic crisis intervention, suicide intervention, and psychedelic first aid.

Alongside my clinical work, I serve as Associate Clinical Director at the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness and as an educator with the Medicinal Mindfulness Academy and Psychedelic Sitters School. In these roles, I help train practitioners to approach psychedelic support with greater clinical skill, ethical awareness, humility, and respect for the complexity of trauma.

Personal Philosophy and Background

I was initiated onto my medicine path at age 19; and from then on, psychedelics have undoubtedly been the greatest source of growth in my life. Although my earliest experiences were exploratory, they helped me reconnect with parts of myself that had felt inaccessible and showed me possibilities for living with greater honesty, vitality, and emotional depth.

In 2015, I began providing psychedelic peer support and harm-reduction services at live music events. My background includes sustained involvement with DanceSafe and training through the Zendo Project and related harm-reduction organizations. I have apprenticed with masters in psychedelic healing for the last 8 years and have been able to hone my skills as a psychedelic practitioner under wise, ethical and careful tutelage. Over the past decade, I have supported psychedelic experiences through peer support, crisis response, education, facilitation, psychotherapy, and Colorado’s regulated natural medicine system.

My work as a psychotherapist has taught me how psychedelic experiences can be integrated into a longer process of healing and change. I feel especially called to help people recover from trauma, including sexual trauma, and rebuild a sense of safety, agency, trust, embodiment, and connection. I approach the strategies people developed to survive with respect, recognizing that protective parts cannot simply be pushed aside and that meaningful healing cannot be rushed.

I do not believe healing can be reduced to the intensity of a single psychedelic experience. Dramatic breakthroughs may be meaningful, but lasting change also occurs in smaller moments: staying present with a difficult feeling, responding differently to an old pattern, setting a needed boundary, receiving care, or bringing greater honesty and compassion into everyday life.

My role is not to direct you toward a predetermined experience. It is to create conditions that allow you to remain in meaningful contact with yourself, the medicine, and the therapeutic relationship while preserving your agency and respecting your limits.

I believe psychedelic work should move at the speed of trust. Preparation is not merely something we complete before the “real” experience, and integration is not simply an effort to preserve whatever occurred during a session. The therapeutic process is larger than the medicine. It includes the gradual development of safety, capacity, self-understanding, agency, relationship, and the ability to bring meaningful change into everyday life.

I feel deeply connected to my sense of purpose when accompanying people through this work. I am continually humbled by the courage healing requires and honored by the trust clients place in me.

Spiritual Statement

Psychedelics have deeply shaped my spiritual life. They helped restore a relationship with spirituality that I had lost and continue to inform my practice today.

In my own experience, there is an intrinsic and often ineffable intelligence within human beings, within the natural world, and within psychedelic experiences. I understand this intelligence as spirit: something that moves through and connects us while remaining larger than any single explanation, tradition, or belief.

My personal spiritual practice is informed by nature-based paganism and by an interest in the pre-Christian mystical traditions of my ancestors. This is the framework through which I make meaning of my own experiences; it is not a framework I impose upon clients.

I welcome people from all religious, spiritual, and philosophical backgrounds, including people who identify as atheist, agnostic, uncertain, or spiritually wounded. I will use language that respects your beliefs rather than asking you to adopt mine. Spiritual experiences can be approached spiritually, psychologically, neurologically, symbolically, relationally, or through some combination of these perspectives.

In my personal relationship with psychedelics, I experience the medicines as allies with wisdom and consciousness of their own. I also hold this as a spiritual orientation rather than an objective claim that clients must accept. My task is not to tell you what your experience means or to position myself as an authority over it.

The years I have spent developing relationships with these medicines help me accompany people through unfamiliar terrain. Ultimately, however, the most important sources of guidance are your own inner wisdom, your values, your body, your lived experience, and the meanings that emerge for you.

My role is to listen carefully, offer support and perspective, protect your agency, and remain in service of the healing process as it actually unfolds.

*Please note: Psychedelic Therapy is not for everyone. We will not provide services to you unless we believe it is physically and psychologically safe for you, and unless we believe you are likely to greatly benefit from investing in this work. We have a very thorough screening process (apologies in advance for the length of our paperwork!) because your safety and well-being are our priorities. Scheduling a non-refundable discovery call with us does not guarantee access to our services.

Hourly Rate: $225