EMBARK
EMBARK is a psychedelic-assisted therapy support model published by Brennan and Belser in 2022 and released open-access rather than licensed. It organizes preparation and integration around six clinical domains — existential-spiritual, mindfulness, body aware, affective-cognitive, relational, and keeping momentum — with four care cornerstones meant to keep delivery trauma-informed, culturally competent, ethically rigorous and collectively minded. It structures the therapy rather than explaining how psychedelics work. Its evidence is early: it was the support model alongside Cybin's CYB003 in a Phase 1/2a depression trial whose headline remission figure was announced by press release and is not yet peer-reviewed. It is transdiagnostic, delivered by a dyadic facilitation team across preparation, medicine and integration phases.
Related condition topics
These links support exploration. They do not establish that EMBARK is effective or recommended for each condition.
How EMBARK works
Six domains the model holds to be common in psychedelic states organize preparation and integration; four 'care cornerstones' are meant to keep delivery ethical, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive. The structure organizes the therapy rather than explaining how psychedelics work.
Ontology
A whole person whose psychedelic experience activates multiple dimensions simultaneously (existential, somatic, relational, affective-cognitive) requiring a multi-domain therapeutic response rather than a single-mechanism model
Therapeutic Voice
"You keep coming back to what your body was doing when it started. Let's stay there a while before we go to what it meant."
View of the Person
A person who is not reducible to the mechanism a given drug acts on: one session touches meaning, body, relationship, and mood at once
Epistemology
Evidence
Assessment not yet completed
An overall effectiveness assessment has not been completed. This describes the state of our review, not whether the approach works.
Recorded material under review
The existing notes below are retained separately from assessment records. These recorded claims await source checking, including study design, recommendations and numerical estimates.
Not in major clinical guidelines; recognized in psychedelic-assisted therapy research context
EMBARK is the psychotherapy support model used alongside Cybin's CYB003 (a synthetic psilocybin analog, not psilocybin itself) in that company's Phase 1/2a MDD trial; Cybin reported 79% remission via press release (not yet peer-reviewed) for the combined drug-plus-support protocol: published data do not isolate EMBARK's own contribution
Emerging; Frontiers in Psychology model description (2022)
Developed at Cybin, a clinical-stage psychedelics company, in response to gaps its authors identified in existing psychedelic-assisted therapy models: too little attention to the body, to ethics, and to cultural difference. Released open-access rather than licensed, and built to be transdiagnostic and trans-drug, so the same scaffold is used for psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, or DMT. Cybin reports more than 4,000 clinicians registered for the free foundational course at embarkapproach.com.
Training and certification
EMBARK foundational training (open access online); EMBARK Certified Facilitator program for clinical trial contexts
EMBARK Certified Facilitator
Open-access foundational course: ~4 hrs; full certification: intensive training with supervision
Open-access course: free; certification training: varies by program
Find a trained therapist
Equity & Cultural Adaptations
Clinical cautions and blind spots
Assessment and precautions
Same medical and psychiatric contraindications as the specific psychedelic being used; active psychosis, severe cardiovascular conditions, medications with dangerous interactions
Blind spots
Developed within a pharmaceutical research context (Cybin); limited independent replication; open-source status means variable implementation quality; requires specialized training not yet standardized across programs
Philosophical roots
Grof (non-ordinary states); James (varieties of religious experience); harm reduction philosophy; CBT, ACT, and psychodynamic traditions integrated
Compared with other approaches
Test Yourself
What does EMBARK stand for?
Show answer
Existential-Spiritual, Mindfulness, Body Aware, Affective-Cognitive, Relational, Keeping Momentum: six domains that commonly emerge in psychedelic experiences.