What does a truffle ceremony do to you? You do not become someone else

There is a question that comes up remarkably often during the intake call, and almost always hesitantly. People are afraid that after a truffle ceremony they will be someone else. That they will no longer love their partner, or no longer love the same things.

Kelly Schuller has many of those conversations. Her answer is short: that is precisely not what happens.

In an intake call people rarely start here. First come the practical questions: the dose, the safety, how long it lasts, whether you can still drive afterwards. Only later in the conversation, sometimes just before hanging up, does this come.

I do still get the question at an intake. If I do a journey, I am afraid I will no longer love my partner. Or no longer love the same things. Or that you really do become a different person.

It is an understandable fear. You are going into a day whose outcome you do not know, and you have heard that people stand differently in life afterwards. The step from there to "so I will be someone else" is quickly taken.

You actually become more yourself.

What participants tell us afterwards is rarely about new traits. More often it is about recognition: finding something again that was already there, but that had disappeared under years of adjusting and carrying on. The words people use for it differ, but the gist is almost always the same.

What Kelly hears back most often is that people recover their confidence in themselves. Not as something new, but as something they had lost along the way: daring again to go by what you feel and know yourself, instead of by what is expected of you.

That is also why we do not promise that you will be rid of something. A ceremony is not a treatment and does not replace regular care. What we do see is that people start to look at things from another perspective.

There is an honest caveat to add here, and Kelly makes it herself:

Of course it does happen that people start making different choices. But it does not change you as a person.

That difference is the whole point. Someone who decides after a ceremony to look for other work, or to have a conversation that has been put off for years, has not changed in who they are. They see more sharply what they already knew. That can be uncomfortable, including for the people around them, but it is something other than becoming a different person.

We do not know beforehand what will come up for you, and we make no statements about what you will do afterwards. That is not ours to do.

Anyone reading our texts could get the idea that this is mainly a spiritual affair. Kelly is clear about that in the interview:

We are spiritual, but we are not airy.

You are not expected to believe in anything. The dose is deliberately kept moderate, the music is put together in advance, there are two guides with a maximum of ten participants, and you are screened by phone beforehand. Down to earth people are in the right place with us.

A related worry is about the group: what if all kinds of things come loose with others present?

Everyone comes for themselves. That inner journey you are on, the person next to you is on one too. They are entirely in their own world.

Grief is allowed to be there, and it regularly is. Anyone who would rather do this alone or as a pair can choose a private or duo ceremony. There is more room there for personal attention, and your own music can run through it.

Then the intake call is exactly the place to ask this. That conversation carries no obligation and covers your health, your medication and your reasons. We do sometimes say no, and that is part of it. The call is in English.

To read more about how a day runs, see what a truffle ceremony is, or look through the upcoming dates. Rather talk first? Then use the contact page.