Gary Logan and Robert Grover weren’t always guides to self-knowledge, armed with a multimillion-dollar property, proverbial rolodex of one-percenters, and psilocybin, ready to change clients’ minds.
Before launching The Journeymen Collective, the luxury retreat they host in their Kelowna, British Columbia, home, Grover was a geologist working with a multinational inspection and testing company. Logan began his career as an actor, and went on to train and teach The Alexander Technique, an approach to movement and breathing designed to reduce stress, among other aims. But each of them began to gravitate toward spiritual experiences and growth. A friend of Grover’s recommended a guided journey using psilocybin, and he gave it a try.
The result was transformational. Afterward, says Grover, “I had discovered a deeper sense of joy within myself. I discovered a lot of different aspects within myself during that journey, to want to create something new.”
At the same time, he and Logan were mourning the loss of Logan’s mother, who had lived with them for four years before her death. Logan was depressed and lost. He spoke to the medicine man who had guided Grover, and decided to try it, too.
“I came out of that journey knowing this is the path we’re supposed to be on because Mother Gaia showed me the direction,” says Logan. “I got my strength back. I came back into alignment.”
As he recounted the trip to Grover, who is his partner in life and business, the two realized they had found a new path for themselves. They were called to now guide other people into transcendent experiences.
“We looked at each other, like okay, let’s just start and let’s see what evolves from there,” says Logan. “And guidance came through.”
Psilocybin experiences, ayahuasca retreats and other escapes built around psychedelic experiences are quickly going from fringe getaway to growth industry. According to Bloomberg, the market is projected to reach $10.7 billion by 2027.
Among the myriad of options from Jamaica to Mexico and beyond, is a psilocybin experience that stands apart. Tucked away in the majestic, lakeside town of Kelowna, British Columbia, Journeymen Collective is a program for people looking for deep inward knowledge and who are willing to do the work that goes with it. It’s for people who like vegan food and salt-water pools. People who prefer to reintegrate post-journey in a sauna, not a sweat lodge. And, moreover, people who have $30,000 or more to spend on enlightenment.
Grover and Logan started their retreat (which they’re careful to not call a retreat—you’re not retreating from yourself, you’re going inward) in 2018. Apart from the price tag, theirs is distinct in its sheer degree of immersion—all journeys start with several video meetings, to set intentions and prepare for the experience, before spending four days on site with Logan and Grover, where they guide two journeys with psilocybin (which they also call medicine) and two days of integration and reflection. Participants must apply first; after that, the road to psilocybin-enabled self-knowledge begins. In a conversation with Terra, they shared more about the experience.
Who is The Journeymen Collective for?
ROB GROVER: People who may have felt like they can’t access something within themselves. They can feel it, they know it’s there, but they just don’t know how to connect into it. And that’s where we come in. We bring together Gary’s 40 years of metaphysical spiritual personal embodiment work. Rob’s 20 years of personal and spiritual development work, and we meld it all together to really guide people through their own metaphysical wilderness of their soul. We guide them through that experience in a way that they can truly discover things about themselves. But the most important part is taking that information, distilling it into understanding, and then applying that understanding into your life, your business and your relationships.
Who isn’t The Journeymen Collective for?
GARY LOGAN: Are people able to accept guidance, direction, and learn to put their ego on the shelf for a time being really open to change? Because most people that come to us know there’s a change in the wind, but they don’t know how to catch the wind to make the change.
Some people want to try psilocybin, but seem less engaged with the bigger training component; others may have a prescription medicine that interferes. You have to be discerning about who you accept into the experience. We want to help everyone, we want to serve humanity.
But sometimes we’ll say, let’s revisit this in a year’s time. Here are some small steps you can take.
ROB GROVER: The other piece too, is do they have the curiosity to the curiosity and the aptitude to actually apply the learnings? There’s an aspect of having a willingness to surrender because there’s a deep clearing out of the old energy that no longer serves the old baggage.
It’s an educational experience, whereby we’re going to give you tools to work with the experience of the journey, so that you’re touching back. We call them Touchstone moments, you’re touching back into the information you were shown during your journey and you’re bringing it through into your present moment and life thereafter.
What happens once someone is accepted into a The Journeymen Collective experience?
ROB: Our main offering is four full months. We have four weeks of preparation minimum, where we meet on Zoom. We have online content in our portal for people to view and be with to help them prepare for the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical. Then they come and work with us in person. We pick them up at the airport in Kelowna, and then we take them to our private center.
People are with us for four days, including breakfast, lunch and dinner. There are two ceremonies with psilocybin that are fully guided, and the work is very dynamic. We attune to the people that are with us. We’re with you the entire time.
Then there’s two full days of integration as well. We’re grounding the transcendental or the spiritual through the mental and the emotional into the physical so that you’re a grounded person by the time that you leave. You’re not floating off into the ether, you’re fully embodied.
What happens during the ceremonies?
ROB: We do a lot of energetic work during the ceremony. So we’re constantly moving the energy within the room and within the participant . We’re connected on many inner planes. So if someone’s looking from the outside, Rob is sitting in stillness. Gary’s sitting in stillness. And the client is sitting in stillness or laying in stillness.
It’s a magical, luxurious experience that we guide people through because we believe that there’s no greater gift than to nurture someone’s soul and help them lighten the load of that which they’ve been carrying. A lot of us haven’t been taught how to liberate ourselves from that. So that becomes part of the educational experience of like, oh, I can actually like I now know how to let go of some of the things. Letting go of the past and making room for the future.
GARY: It’s giving yourself permission to let go of those things.
ROB: After the journey, the next day is integration. We’re with you, we’re having conversations. We’re pulling the threads, like I would see something during their journey, but it’d be a glimpse, and I’ve learned to read those signs. And I would wait to encourage the client to talk about them. If they don’t bring them up, there’s a way you bring them through the story that you want them to expose or share. And then we have the process of releasing and letting go if it needs to be done that way. So that’s a full day—16, 18 hours we’re with people.
Guests can go for a walk in the backyard basically into the woods or go down to the main lake and walk by the water. Then the next day is another journey, the following day’s an integration.
GARY: Then the real work starts again. We’re on a call with you once a week for four weeks. There’s also content again to help you embody the work that you’ve gone through. Then once the four weeks are over, there’s another two months of integration work, but we only speak to them once every two weeks. The thing is with our clients, they’re part of the collective and a part of our family. So we’re still in touch with clients that we first started journeys with. We keep working together and grow.
Why do you work with mushrooms? Why shouldn’t someone just go to therapy?
ROB: You can sit in therapy and talk about things until the cows come home. The true answers are found in the silence. And the witnessing of self. And that’s what the medicine does. When it’s guided, it transitions from a trip to an actual journey of discovery about self.
So why mushrooms? For us it was a calling that we answered and we just kept moving with it. It’s potent. With other plant medicines there can be purging out of one or both ends. That’s not something we want to facilitate people through. Some people adore that whole aspect of going on that journey, facilitating. Sorry. If people truly believe that everything is just energy, then when you have a skilled guide with you that person can just help you move that energy without going through that aggressive, physical, purging. It’s uncomfortable enough.
How do clients’ lives change?
GARY: I think everybody that comes through a Journey wants to write a book. I’d say 80%.
ROB: There are other people that I would say there’s a strong likelihood that people would start a new business or their business would sort of be here. And then it’s like, what’s that next level? What’s that? It’s like an amplification process that takes place.
GARY: There’s one gentleman that was a medical doctor. He sold his house. Moved across the states and opened up his own healing center. We worked with him to release the old way of being. We helped give him permission.
ROB: They leave with more of a connectedness. I always say most people come into their own. They’re on the cusp of disconnect. And then as they grow through the journey and the work with us, there’s a connection that comes through. A true sense of security.
Learn more about Gary, Rob and The Journeymen Collective.
SOURCES:
https://alexandertechnique.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGS_S.A.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-grover-msc-a9247415/?originalSubdomain=ca
https://www.linkedin.com/in/logangary/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-08-24/pursuits-weekly-this-vacation-is-a-real-trip
