Showing posts with label ayahuasca. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ayahuasca. Show all posts

Friday, May 29, 2009

Ayahuasca Healing Journey - Part II
How to Fix You if You're Broken


“Remarkable physical healings and resolutions of psychological difficulties can occur with this medicine.”
– Dr. Ralph Metzner, Sacred Vine of Spirits (1)

If you’re Indiana Jones-ing for adventure…

Ayahuasca will provide it for you in spades.

But don’t confuse it with an E-ticket ride at Disney.

As one expert, Dr. Jeremy Narby puts it, “ayahuasca is the deep water.”(2)

There’s no hiding from the ayahuasca.

You will be given the gift of a meeting with your own unconscious mind. Unfortunately, it can be quite dark in there.

You Must Be Prepared

If you are considering your own ayahuasca cleansing, you must have the courage to be willing to open yourself up to having extremely dark encounters as a way to break through your deepest fears, your blocked emotions, and your suppressed memories to emerge cleansed from the chains that hold you back.

This bondage can only be alleviated during an ayahuasca ceremony by facing your demons head-on.


Ayahuasca Dream by Robert Venosa

The more serious your issues are, the more intense your experience is likely to be. And the greater your reward.

Each person’s experience is unique. And you’ll never have two ayahuasca sessions which are identical:

You may experience “soul retrieval,” recovering a splintered “soul part” which had fled to survive a traumatic incident in your past. Shamans believe that unless you undergo “soul retrieval,” these parts of you will be lost forever.

You could cross into other dimensions to meet your other incarnations – your other lives.

You may even be granted an audience with the Almighty himself. Shamans claim to see Him all the time.

Reported experiences during ayahuasca cleansing ceremonies include:

Dr. Jeremy Narby:
“…found myself surrounded by enormous fluorescent serpents that were fifteen yards long…and hair-raisingly real. They started communicating to me in a kind of thought language, telling me things about myself that were painfully true, including that I was just a tiny human being who didn’t understand very much.

Then I flew out of my body, miles above the planet, until the shaman shifted his song and I landed back in my body.”(2)

Kara Salak:
“…I reached the bottom of the tunnel and saw three thrones in a black chamber. Three shadowy figures sat in the chairs; in the middle was what I took to be the devil himself.

“The darkness will never end,” he said. “It will never end. You can never escape this place.”

“I can,” I replied. All at once, I willed myself to rise. I sailed up through the tunnel of fire, higher and higher until I broke through to a white light. All darkness immediately vanished. My body felt light, at peace. I floated among a beautiful spread of colors and patterns. Slowly my ayahuasca vision faded.

“Welcome back,” the shaman said.

The next morning, I discovered the impossible: The severe depression that had ruled my life since childhood had miraculously vanished.”(3)

Clinical Confirmation from the West

UCLA’s Dr. Charles Grob oversees the Hoasca Project.

Many of the subjects he’s studied have experienced “remarkable transformations” including achieving lasting sobriety from chronic alcoholism and drug abuse, along with significant reductions of associated psychopathologies.

Dr. Charles Grob:
“One particularly surprising finding was the up-regulated platelet serotonin receptor systems in subjects, which might be the neurobiological basis of ayahuasca’s observed antidepressant and mood regulation effects.”(2)

There is a very profound chemical combination at work in the ayahuasca brew which is highly therapeutic and according to Dr. Grob “a far more sophisticated and effective way to treat depression than SSRIs [antidepressant drugs],” which he terms “a rather crude way” of doing it.(3)

If you’re willing to journey half way around the world, trudge deep into the rainforest and surrender yourself to a shaman’s care, in order to face your darkest terrors, you just may be rewarded exponentially.


South America (click image to enlarge)

These complex plants offer you an opportunity to communicate with the vast intelligence of the natural world.

In the Amazon, Earth’s own garden, as the sultry jungle pulses with a primal energy, you’ll become indoctrinated into the magical, mystical world of plant spirit shamanism.

If you’ll tune in to the sheer power of nature, ayahuasca is your invitation to emerge from the rainforest, stumbling out of the fog and into a new consciousness.


Amazon River at sunset - photo: Mike Lehtimaki

Ayahuasca opens the door to a life-changing experience, a spiritual epiphany of consciousness. And a return to balance and equilibrium.

During the ceremony, you’ll be seeing through your “third eye,” freeing you from three-dimensional reality and allowing you to connect with multiple dimensions.

It’s available now.

And it has been for thousands of years.


“Plant speech sounds like the hum of high-voltage wires, with a rhythmic, songlike quality to it. This is interesting, since shamans have spoken for thousands of years about the “song of the universe” – the energy vibration beneath all things.”
- Ross Heaven and Howard G. Charing, Plant Spirit Shamanism(4)


If you’d like to explore ayahuasca further, here are a few resources you can find at your local library, bookstore or you can purchase them at Amazon.

In the meantime, you may be interested in Kira Salak’s story, Peru: Hell and Back. In National Geographic Adventure, Ms. Salak chronicles her own exorcism during an ayahuasca cleansing. It was the key to her escape from a crushing lifelong depression.

And if you choose to pursue ayahuasca cleansing on your quest for health and wellness, I wish you every success on your personal journey.


1 Sacred Vine of Spirits, Dr. Ralph Metzner ed., 2005, Park St. Press
2 Visionary Plant Consciousness – The Shamanic Teachings of the Plant World, J.P. Harpignies ed., 2007, Park Street Press
3 National Geographic Adventure, Kira Salak
4 Plant Spirit Shamanism, Ross Heaven and Howard G. Charing, 2006, Destiny Books

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Ayahuasca Healing Journey - Part I

"There is probably no hangover that comes anywhere close to the hangover from an exorcism." - National Geographic

I’m not going to lie to you.

This 2-part ayahuasca series is going to be intense.

This blog isn't called ultimate health for nothing.

So, if you’re feeling adventurous…


copyright Tadd_Debbie

Today we’re going to journey deep into the Amazon rainforest. You might even say deep into your very own heart of darkness, to explore a powerful jungle medicine called ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca is made from the ayahuasca vine and the leaf of the Chacruna plant.

This powerful plant combination is the key which unlocks the door into another world – the innerworld of your unconscious mind.

Ayahuasca healing ceremonies, which are conducted by shamans, have been an integral part of life in the upper Amazon for centuries, dating back at least 2,500 years.

Spirituality is at the core of the Ayahuasca experience.

Purification and cleansing of body, mind, and spirit in a shamanic ceremony can be the springboard to a profound personal and spiritual transformation.

Ayahuasca Cleansing Journey

Ayahuasca is a name derived from two Quechua words: aya means spirit or ancestor and huasca means vine or rope. Ergo, ayahuasca is known as vine of the soul or vine of the spirit.

It’s also called many other names including yaje, caapi, natema, pinde, daime, mihi and dapa, depending on the tribe and its location.

The plants are collected in a sacred way and it’s said that a shaman can find plentiful sources of the vine by listening for the ‘drumbeat’ that emanates from them.


copyright JDRorer

The mixture is prepared by cutting the vines and pounding them into a pulp and mixing them with the cleaned Chacruna leaves.

Depending on the shamanic prescription for the ceremony, up to 100 other plants may also be used in the mixture.

This organic brew is a psychotropic drug which contains DMT (Dimethyltriptamine). DMT is illegal in the U.S. but is legal in the Amazon region.

Without specific intent, vision, scrupulous preparation and shaman guidance, it is a drug and not a healing medicine.

These shaman-guided Ayahuasca cleansing sessions are potentially an extraordinarily powerful healing experience.

An Ayahuasca Cleansing Session (or OMG! What the Hell is the Devil Doing Here?!)

The shaman determines your specific volume of the ayahuasca based on several factors, including how big your problems are, how long you’ve been haunted by them and the ‘aura’ you display.

The shamans are veterans of dozens and often-times hundreds and even thousands of ayahuasca ceremonies.

They smoke a tobacco and blow it on the brew, onto themselves, and onto the top of your head as a way to purify the experience.

When you partake of the ayahuasca brew, you lie down on a comfortable mattress and wait about 20 minutes for the sacred plants to take hold.


Fire burn and cauldron bubble...

The shamans sing specific chants, called Icaros, which coax the healing spirits to appear.

The specific Icaros will be based on exactly what the shaman is attempting to accomplish both group-wise and for each individual.

The purpose of the chant at the beginning of the ceremony is to provoke your mind to allow visions to penetrate.

Some Icaros call for plant spirits, for healing. Others call for animal spirits, to protect and rid patients of spells.

If visions become too strong, the Icaros can be used to induce the spirits to depart to allow the person to regain their equilibrium.

The complete experience creates an environment that helps open the doors of perception.

What you do when you get there is entirely your own challenge. That's why each person’s experience is completely their own.

As the shaman chants songs rich in symbolism calling for nature to heal itself, you are there for one thing.

Your mission is to break through your deepest, most all-consuming fears and to purge any demons of any form that have taken root inside you.

You’re given a bucket to vomit into to expel your toxic physical and psychological issues.

The bile you blow out in an ayahuasca cleansing is toxic waste that must be released from your system. This cleansing purge is essential in your preparation for a new level of consciousness.

The ayahuasca is powerful medicine for what ails you.

Many people have reported an emotional lifting of lifelong crippling depression after undergoing one ayahuasca cleansing session. These include Paul Theroux, the author, who wrote about his experience years ago.

The process is one of surrendering your ego, breaking through your fears and attaining a psychic rebirth.

The ayahusca is used to break down your defenses so you can converse directly with your unconscious.

This is known in some cultures as your third eye or sixth chakra.

Some participants have reported extremely disturbing encounters with demons, serpents, dragons and a black void of nothingness at this juncture in their ayahuasca journey.

Next time, we’ll see that for some, an ayahuasca cleansing is nothing short of a full-blown exorcism.