Becoming a hub clinic isn’t just about growth. It’s not about seeing more clients or expanding your service offerings, though both of those things might happen. At its core, becoming a hub clinic is about connection—to other practitioners, to the wider ATMA CENA-trained community, and to a vision of mental health care that’s bigger than any single practice.
Hub clinics become gathering places. They become resources. And most importantly, they become catalysts for change in their communities.
What Is a Hub Clinic, Really?
In ATMA CENA’s network, a hub clinic is a practice that has integrated psychedelic-assisted therapy into its offerings and serves as a central point of support for other clinics and practitioners in its region. These aren’t franchises or corporate outposts. They’re independent practices that have chosen to be part of something larger—a collaborative care model that lifts everyone up.
Hub clinics don’t just treat clients. They:
- Mentor newer practitioners who are learning to integrate psychedelic-assisted therapy into their work
- Share best practices with other clinics in the network
- Host training opportunities or serve as sites where therapists can observe sessions
- Connect ATMA CENA-trained therapists with each other for peer support and learning
- Model ethical, safe, evidence-based care that other practices can learn from
In essence, hub clinics are leaders—not because they’re better than other practices, but because they’re further along in the process and willing to bring others with them.
Collaboration Over Competition
One of the most striking things about ATMA CENA’s hub clinic model is that it’s explicitly non-competitive. In traditional healthcare, clinics often guard their methods, protect their client base, and view other practices as threats. Hub clinics operate from a completely different philosophy.
The goal isn’t to corner the market. It’s to expand access.
When a hub clinic supports another practitioner in offering psychedelic-assisted therapy, they’re not losing business—they’re creating more pathways for healing. They’re ensuring that people who need this care can find it, even if it’s not through their own doors.
This approach reflects one of ATMA CENA’s core values: bridging traditional and emerging therapies responsibly requires collaboration, not competition. No single clinic can meet all the need. But together, a network of trained, supported, ethical practitioners can make a real difference.
The Ability to Serve Treatment-Resistant Clients
Hub clinics often distinguish themselves by their capacity to support clients who haven’t found success through traditional treatments. These are the clients who’ve tried therapy, medication, and self-help—who’ve done everything “right” and still struggle.
Psychedelic-assisted therapy offers these clients something different. It provides personalized care plans reviewed by licensed medical professionals, tailored to their unique histories and needs. It creates access to altered states of consciousness where stuck patterns can loosen and new insights can emerge. And it does so within a framework of safety, medical oversight, and trauma-informed care.
When a hub clinic develops expertise in this work, word spreads. Clients who are desperate for relief start to hear that there’s a place where people are getting real results. Other therapists in the community begin referring clients they don’t know how to help. And slowly, the hub becomes known not just as a clinic, but as a resource.
Drawing In Other Professionals
Interestingly, hub clinics don’t just attract clients—they attract other professionals.
Therapists who’ve been curious about psychedelic-assisted therapy but didn’t know where to start might reach out to shadow a session or ask questions about training. Physicians who’ve been hesitant to prescribe these treatments might visit to see how safety protocols work in practice. Wellness practitioners—yoga teachers, somatic bodyworkers, sound healers—might discover opportunities to integrate their modalities into a continuum of services supporting recovery and resilience.
This cross-pollination of expertise is one of the most valuable aspects of the hub model. It creates an interdisciplinary clinical team environment even beyond the clinic’s walls, as practitioners from different backgrounds learn from each other and find ways to collaborate.
Partnerships That Elevate Everyone
Hub clinics often become sites where partnerships form. A therapist who completes ATMA CENA training might connect with a hub clinic to access medical oversight for their clients. A clinic that wants to add psychedelic-assisted therapy but doesn’t have trained staff might partner with therapists from the hub to deliver that care.
These partnerships aren’t transactional. They’re relational. They’re built on trust, shared values, and a commitment to ethical practice. And they create a level of support that solo practitioners or isolated clinics simply can’t replicate.
Imagine being a newly trained therapist trying to integrate psychedelic-assisted therapy into your practice. You’ve completed the coursework, but you’re still nervous about managing a session. You have questions about dosing, safety protocols, and how to handle difficult moments. If you’re connected to a hub clinic, you have people to call. You have experienced practitioners who remember what it was like to be new and who are willing to mentor you through those early sessions.
That kind of support is invaluable—and it’s one of the defining features of ATMA CENA’s network.
Creating a Space That Lifts Others Up
At the end of the day, becoming a hub clinic is about creating a space where healing, learning, and community all come together.
It’s not about being the biggest or the best. It’s about being generous with your knowledge, open to collaboration, and committed to the long-term growth of this field.
Hub clinics understand that they’re not just treating individual clients—they’re building the infrastructure for a new kind of mental health care. They’re modeling what’s possible. They’re training the next generation of practitioners. And they’re proving that psychedelic-assisted therapy can be done safely, ethically, and effectively in real-world clinical settings.
The Ripple Effect
When a hub clinic succeeds, the impact ripples outward. More clinics join the network. More therapists seek training. More clients gain access to care. And slowly, the field itself begins to shift.
This is the vision that drives ATMA CENA’s work: not just treating clients one at a time, but creating a movement that transforms how we approach mental health care in Canada.
Hub clinics are at the center of that movement. They’re the proof that it works. They’re the places where skeptics become believers, where curiosity turns into competence, and where isolated practitioners find their people.
If you’re a clinic owner, therapist, or healthcare leader who’s been considering this path—if you’ve wondered whether you could be more than just a practice, whether you could be a resource for your community—becoming a hub clinic might be the next right step.
It’s not easy. It requires investment, training, and a willingness to grow. But for the clinics that take on that role, the rewards go far beyond revenue. You become part of something larger than yourself. You become a force for change.
And in a field that’s evolving as rapidly as psychedelic-assisted therapy, that’s exactly the kind of leadership we need.
Curious about what it takes to become a hub clinic?
Learn more about ATMA CENA’s partner clinic model and explore whether this path is right for your practice.
