Setting an Intention (and Letting It Go)

Every medicine session at LuminaThera begins with an intention. Yours might be a full sentence. It might be one word. Either way, it works like a compass rather than a map. It gives you a direction to set out from, and then the session goes where it goes.

Held tightly, as an outcome the session must deliver, an intention narrows the experience. Held lightly, it becomes a reference point. You can return to it during the session, and again in the integration work that follows.

Start with what you want to invite rather than what you want to eliminate. Instead of asking the depression to go away, you might reach for more ease, more connection, or a clearer view of a pattern that keeps repeating.

From there, the worksheet walks the same ground our preparation sessions do. Name the topics that feel alive. Notice the beliefs attached to them, including the harsh ones, and the counter-beliefs you are reaching for. List the strengths that carried you through past challenges. Then write the intention itself in one plain sentence: I would like to. I am becoming more. I am already.

Say it out loud. A true intention usually lands somewhere physical.

Once the intention is named, the work changes. You place it in your pocket like a compass and release your grip on what the session should look like. Some of the most useful sessions answer a question you did not ask.

If your mind starts contracting around expectations, that is normal. Notice it, then ask a softer question: what wants to let go? Your role in the session is closer to passenger than driver. The medicine drives. You watch out the window with curiosity.

The worksheet below is the one our participants complete before their first medicine session. It takes twenty to thirty minutes with a journal and a quiet room, and it is worth revisiting between sessions, since intentions evolve as the work deepens.

Several of the prompts draw on the work of Sara Herman, MD and Anne Metz, PhD, LPC, whose preparation frameworks shaped our own.