Psychedelic therapy opens a window. The Tao gives you something to walk through it into. A practical guide to the Tao Te Ching — six parts, eighteen chapters, a 30-day practice guide.
Most people who go through a significant psychedelic experience come home changed — but they return to an unchanged life. The insights feel real. The shift feels genuine. And then, slowly, the ordinary world reasserts itself, and the window that opened begins to close.
This isn't failure. It's the integration problem. The medicine can show you what a more aligned life looks like. But alignment isn't a destination you visit once — it's an orientation you practice daily. And most Western frameworks don't have the vocabulary for what that practice actually looks like.
The Tao Te Ching has been teaching exactly this for 2,500 years. Wu wei — effortless action — is what integration asks of you in the session. Stillness is the daily practice that makes the insights liveable. Letting go of control is the surrender principle you rehearsed in preparation. The Tao didn't know about psychedelics. But it knew about everything they're trying to teach you.
This course is Eric Schwarz's attempt to bring those teachings down to earth — not as philosophy to admire, but as a daily practice to live. Eighteen chapters, one practice per chapter, and a 30-day guide that turns the teachings into a structured daily routine.
You don't need to be spiritual to use it. You don't need to believe anything in particular. You just need to be willing to pay a different kind of attention to your life.
Each part contains 2–4 chapters with a practice at the end of each. Work through them in order, or go where you're drawn.
Unlike anything else on Minds Awaken — the 30-day guide turns the course into a structured daily practice. Each day has a specific practice from the course, a short description, and a link to the relevant module.
Mark each day complete as you go. Your progress is saved. Reset and begin again whenever you need to.
Week 1: Foundation and Simplicity. Week 2: Wu Wei and Doing Less. Week 3: Relationships and Water. Week 4: Stillness and Letting Go. Days 29–30: Integration.
Open the 30-day guide →10 of 30 days complete — Week 2 in progress
If you've been through a psychedelic experience — or if you're preparing for one — the Tao Te Ching has a surprising amount to offer. Not because Laozi knew about psilocybin or ayahuasca. But because he was pointing at the same territory they reveal.
Wu wei — effortless action — is surrender. It is what you practice in Module 6 of the Inner Compass Course before your session. The Tao Te Ching is 2,500 years of training in the skill the medicine asks of you in the hardest moments.
Stillness without the mysticism is daily integration. The five minutes of stillness practice in Part Five is the maintenance dose — the way you keep the window open between sessions.
Letting go of control is the work the medicine invariably surfaces. The Hands-Open Meditation is the practice that makes that surrender available outside of the session.
This course is excellent preparation. The Tao builds the orientations — openness, surrender, stillness, not-knowing — that make a psychedelic session safe and productive.
This is the daily practice layer. The medicine showed you. The Tao gives you the framework for living what it showed you, one ordinary day at a time.
The course stands entirely on its own. The Tao is useful regardless of context. Most of the people who will benefit from it have never thought about psychedelics.
The 30-day practice guide is designed for this. A structured, daily return to the practices that keep the insights from a session alive in your actual life.
It is available right now. In the next breath. In the small choice between forcing and flowing. In the five minutes of stillness before everything else starts.
Begin the course free →The Water Way is the third free course on the site — alongside the Inner Compass Course (psychedelic preparation and integration) and the Foundation Course (learning to love yourself). All three are free, all three stand alone, and all three are better together.