For this post, I decided I wanted to share some of my personal story as a testament to healing with Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca was the plant that first made me realize that I was blind to what was in front of me. That there was so much that I wasn’t seeing about life and importantly, about myself.
When I drank Ayahuasca for the first time, it was like someone wiped the lenses of my eyes clean, and allowed me to see. To see what was real, and true, for the first time in my life.
The first gift I received from Ayahuasca was the opportunity to connect to the feeling of pure joy. To be able to roll around on the ground, laughing uncontrollably, the way I imagine a young unbridled child to. I don’t know how many hours, or minutes went by, but connecting to joy in this way was like coming back to life, and I realized that this joy that I was experiencing was my birthright. That it was a feeling available to me always, that I could experience it in my daily life, in every moment of it. This came with the understanding that I did not allow myself to experience joy. I took life too seriously. I took myself too seriously. This seriousness had turned me into someone who was super harsh on everyone around me, and I understood that the harshness I projected outward to be a reflection of how severely harsh I was on myself.
This was the takeaway from my first ceremony. In later ceremonies, I would come to understand why I developed this way of being, but this was the first step. And this is what healing with Ayahuasca can be like. Often, it is the first step in a process that one embarks on to transform.
Drinking Ayahuasca and having this awareness about myself inspired me to seek for more clarity and understanding about myself. My first ceremony was 2 weeks before the world locked down for COVID, so I had to wait some time until I could sit with her again. In the months in between my first and second sitting, I found other plant medicines to support me in this process of self-discovery, but as my intention with this post, and the series it will probably become, is to keep it focussed on Ayahuasca.
When I was able to return to sit with Ayahuasca again I traveled to Mexico for 3 ceremonies back to back near Chichen Itza.
The first night, I could not connect to the medicine. Now, with the experience I have I could potentially say I have some understanding as to why that was, but the first night, I don’t recall having any takeaways from the experience, other than I was so blocked, that the Shaman came over to me and did some very painful body work on me to help release some of the blockages.
Now that I’m writing this, I can’t seem to remember what my takeaway was during the ceremony, but the takeaways from the final ceremony remained crystal clear.
The first was the awareness and recognition, again for the first time in my life, of my body. Of how incredibly impressive it is. This vessel that literally sustains my life. All of the different parts, all of the different functions. I was in a state of utter awe. With that came the understanding of how sacred my body is, how sacred I am, and how much care and respect it deserves. That I could either make it really challenging for my body to function optimally, or I could support it by being mindful of what I put inside of it and how I treat it. This awareness of the body and how I relate to it has also been it’s own journey and process, but again, this was the first step. Awareness of something that one was totally unaware of before, is usually the first step. I still remember how I felt, looking at my limbs, thinking about my organs and the way in which they function, and feeling such gratitude and love for my body.
After this moment with my body, came the experience that I was most moved by, and grateful for.
On the very top of the list of things I am so grateful to Ayahuasca for, is the healing and transformation I’ve experienced in my relationship with my parents. A journey full of lessons and insights that I will save for part II of healing with Ayahuasca.