Today we’d like to introduce you to Samantha Schrantz Takamori.
Hi Samantha , so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My path has been quite unconventional, but looking back, there’s actually been a pretty consistent thread running through all of it, which is my deep interest in people.
Why we do what we do, how our experiences shape us, and what it takes to heal.
I really started my adult career path when I dropped out of college and went into law enforcement at 21 years old. And although that path ultimately wasn’t the right fit for me, it taught me a lot about systems, authority, and the ways people respond to power and control.
From there, I worked in a secure psychiatric youth facility as a residential counselor, where I was a Qualified Mental Health Associate. This experience sparked a much deeper interest in psychology and the ways trauma influences our development.
Eventually, I went back to school and earned my bachelor’s in science from the University of Oregon. My major was in General Social Science with an emphasis on Crime, Law, and Society, with my minor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. After getting my degree, I started my first business, and for the last seven years I have worked as a criminal defense private investigator, primarily working with indigent defense clients and specializing in murder cases with psychological elements.
Working in criminal defense gave me an incredibly intimate view of people’s lives, their trauma, and the circumstances that can shape their entire lives. It also taught me how almost no situation is black or white, and how complicated human beings really are. One thing that working in the legal system really showed me is how, as a society, we regularly reduce a person to the worst thing they’ve ever done. This began to break my heart. I got to the point where even if I was able to offer help, support, and insight, the damage was already done, and my client was going to spend the rest of their life in incarceration. I genuinely felt I needed to harden my heart to stay in the business, or get out.
Thus, while working in criminal defense, I also completed my master’s degree in psychology. For my program, my graduate research focused on psilocybin and its potential for treating PTSD, which eventually led me to get my legal psilocybin facilitator license here in Oregon.
At this time, I have a few murder cases I am working on around Oregon, as well as a blossoming psilocybin facilitation business, Psilocybin Healing, based out of Eugene, Oregon.
I understand that my work history may not feel connected, however, I feel it is actually a continuation of the same work. I’m moving from helping people make sense of their trauma and how it got them to where they were. In my capacity as a psilocybin facilitator, I feel that I am still helping my clients make sense of their trauma, understand their stories, and reconnect with themselves, but now I get to help them potentially create something different and move forward in a positive direction.
Today, my work sits at the intersection of psychology, trauma, relationships, and healing. I’m particularly interested in helping people navigate the parts of being human that we often don’t have a roadmap for. The places where our past, our relationships, our identity, and our desire for something different all intersect. Thus, although my career has taken some pretty unexpected turns, I feel like I’ve been moving toward the same purpose my entire adult life, holding space for others navigating trauma and helping them reconnect to their true selves.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Definitely not. My road has been anything but actually. However, I believe that has been one of the greatest teachers in my life. All of the moments when the path I thought I was supposed to be on completely fell apart, that was really what helped me get on the right path. I’ve changed careers, gone back to school, visited places across the world, experienced difficult relationships, and had to rebuild aspects of my life and myself way more than once. And professionally, I’ve also had to learn to recognize that just because I am good at something doesn’t mean it was necessarily something I was meant to keep doing.
Additionally, there have also been traumatic periods in my personal life. When I’ve had to confront my own trauma and really examine the ways it had shaped who I was, how I related to other people, and how I showed up.
Therapy and my own healing journey forced me to stop looking at healing as something I was waiting for to happen, and start seeing it as something I actively had to participate in.
So I don’t necessarily see the difficult experiences as obstacles, but rather as part of my necessary education that brought me to where I am now.
I believe that all the trauma I’ve been through and adversity I’ve personally faced has been what allowed me to meet other people in those same places with a lot more compassion, without judgment, and understanding.
So no, it hasn’t been a smooth or easy road. But I’ve come to believe that the difficult parts of our journey are often where we develop depth, perspective, and capacity to do the work we’re ultimately here to do.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
My work is centered around helping people navigate the complicated, beautiful, and sometimes disorienting experience of being human.
My background is somewhat unusual for a licensed psilocybin facilitator.
I have a master’s degree in psychology, spent seven years working as a criminal defense investigator in some of the most serious and complex cases imaginable, but was trained as a psilocybin facilitator here in Oregon.
My goal is to help people make sense of what they’ve experienced and find a way forward that feels more authentic to who they actually are.
My work is trauma-informed and whole-person oriented.
I’m interested not just in what is happening psychologically, but in the relationship between the mind, body, spirit, soul, and heart.
I believe meaningful healing often requires us to stop treating ourselves like problems that need to be fixed and start becoming curious about what our experiences and bodies are trying to tell us.
With my facilitation work specifically, I help people approach psychedelic experiences with intention, preparation, safety, psychology, and integration.
I see the psychedelic experience as one part of a larger process. Not as a magic treatment or something that should be approached casually. The real work is often in creating the conditions for insight and then learning how to bring that insight into our everyday life.
What I believe sets me apart is the combination of perspectives I bring. I understand psychology academically, trauma through both professional and personal experience, the justice system from the inside, and psychedelic facilitation through formal training and personal experience.
I’ve spent much of my life sitting at the intersection of systems and individuals, trying to understand both what happened to someone and what happens inside of them because of it.
I don’t ask people to choose between the scientific and the spiritual. I’m deeply interested in evidence and psychology, but I also believe there are elements of human experience that deserve curiosity even when we don’t have perfect language for them yet.
Ultimately, I want people to know that my work is about creating a space where my clients can feel fully held and safe enough to become more fully themselves. I’m not interested in fixing people. I’m interested in helping people understand themselves deeply enough so that they can make choices for themselves from a place of greater awareness, autonomy, and wholeness.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Another important part of my work is my presence on Instagram. I’ve built a community of more than 23,000 people by creating educational and personal content around psychology, trauma, relationships, mental health, gender dynamics, and healing. I want to give people language for experiences they may not have known how to articulate and invite them to think more deeply about themselves and the world around them.
What I’m especially proud of is creating content that can be both intellectually grounded and deeply human. I don’t think psychology and spirituality have to be opposites, and I don’t think serious conversations about trauma and mental health have to be devoid of humor, beauty, or personality. My social media has become an extension of that philosophy.
@SamanthaTakamori
Pricing:
- All included psilocybin experiences are $2200
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.psilocybinhealing.com
- Instagram: SamanthaTakamori
