For context, read this one first: My First Ayahuasca Retreat: Before
Written April 2021
When retreat day came, we loaded into Ian-Michael’s truck for the drive. I quietly look out the window, mind clear but charged as I mentally prepare for a shift from our intimate group of three to a collection of strangers. I scan the blurred wild green and rich red soil as we navigate winding steep hills deeper into the Diamante Valley—away from Ian-Michael’s abode towards the retreat location.
We arrive at Finca De Vida, “Farm of Life”—a collection of huts, communal spaces and yoga platforms, surrounded with lush plant life which the owners and their guests rely on for both nourishment and medicine.
I like to close my eyes and think of this moment, first arriving, entering into the retreat space. When I do, I smell the Ylang Ylang trees and humid air, a rare March rain came and went in that first hour as if in invitation.
Before merging with the group I set my bags down and fall into the hammock outside my hut, watch grey sheets fall from rain clouds over the rolling jungle hills as I sway, savoring a moment of deep gratitude for this experience and all that brought me to it.
The retreat itself began by creating and nurturing our Pod. Pod was Ian-Michael’s term, the symbolic container that we’d collectively form and hold throughout the week as a group. A safe space in which we’d share and connect, where we could feel free to bare and release, knowing whatever that was would be held and honored.
This was new language for me, pod, container, holding space, but it’s so intuitive to me now. The energy of an environment and the people in it. Whether it feels closed and connected, or open and disparate.
It’s difficult to do, cultivating a space in which strangers from different walks of life can meet and merge. Yet it’s crucial for real surrender and growth in a group plant medicine experience. Ian-Michael does a better job than any I’ve seen in creating and holding that.
We soon began sharing openly and vulnerably. Growing up in the same home and small town, connecting deeply with new humans has never been easy for me. Takes time for trust to build and layers to shed. Here, 24 hours was enough to melt walls and merge with people I now consider lifelong friends.
The container-building extended beyond our connection as a group. What we ate and what we didn’t, how we slept, what we talked about, how we spent our time outside of ceremony, all were intentionally a part of our preparation. We followed a Dieta—vegan, organic and straight from the land on which we slept. No gluten or Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitor (MAOI) contra-indicated foods (anything overripe, preserved, smoked, cured, salted or spoiled), no sex, no caffeine, no alcohol or mind-altering drugs. We spent time in meditation, breathwork, sungazing, hiking, swimming, and rest. All in the effort to create a spacious, receptive, organic and natural container in which to invite positive and formative experiences with Ayahuasca and Peyote.
The day leading up to our first Aya ceremony began as most did in my time in Diamante, with a hike and swim to a waterfall. We were all quiet that morning. Words seemed surface and unnecessary for a few reasons—the deep connectedness we already felt, the sacred experience we would be sharing that evening, and the charged anticipation that we were all internally dealing with in preparation for it.
A feeling built up from the past few days, or for some of us weeks or months, that held a heaviness on our words and a lightness on senses. I could hear, smell, taste, feel so potently that being in that was all I had the energy to do. Maybe it was nerves, or maybe it was my commitment to enter into receptive mode. I’d done enough writing, thinking, talking, now was time to be still, surrender and let in what this experience is meant to teach me.
When we returned to Finca De Vida that afternoon, we spent time learning about the Ayahuasca we’d be drinking, the land, culture, tradition, and lineage it came from and who would be bringing that to us—a man from Peru trained in the Shipibo tradition. We picked flowers from the bobinsana tree for a tea we drank in preparation for the medicine. Bobinsana is a plant native to the Amazon Basin and often offered together with Ayahuasca as part of a dieta to enhance the hallucinogenic properties of Ayahuasca. A quick download on Ayahuasca:
This medicine is not a single molecule or plant, but a complex mixture of different ingredients that have been used for over 1000 years in South America. It includes one or a combination of DMT-containing plants, like chacruna, and caapi, a vine that prevents the body from rapidly breaking down DMT. DMT is a powerful hallucinogenic, but when exposed to enzymes called monoamine oxidases (MAOs) in the stomach or liver, it gets broken down. When brewed with caapi, this is prevented and the experience can take effect. It’s a mystery how this concoction was discovered, but shamanic cultures live by the legend that they received the recipe from the plants themselves. I recommend The Cosmic Serpent for a fascinating read on that.
We shared our intentions in a circle then began preparing for the ceremony which was being set up in the communal area, our maloca. I scanned the mats laid out, the thought I put into which one I’d pick for the night was a welcomed distraction from the growing nerves inside me.
The experience itself. I hear the repetitive chants, drums, and guitar strumming from our shaman and helpers in the center, holding the space for us in those 6 hours. I see the candle flames and near-full moon light revealing our white-clothed bodies laying on our circle of mats, then sometimes moving, writhing, or dancing. I smell the incense and warm night air. I feel the frenetic disparate powerful personal experiences of each individual in the group. I hear the shouts, moans, retches, cries, and laughs in moments of their releases.
I sat in meditation as I observed and experienced all this. The first hour after drinking my own cup, my experience was the others’. I was immersed in and absorbing everyone else’s Aya worlds.
It was uncomfortable. I sat there wondering how anyone can go deep and have their own experience amidst the intensities of others’. I’d had more than a few guided high-dose experiences prior to this, but never with a group. This was new. I questioned whether it was for me, whether I’d be able to surrender and tune into my own experience or if my sponge tendencies would keep me surface and present, receiving everyone else’s and leaving no room for my own.
I hoped the former because this wasn’t fun. It was chaotic and overwhelming. When our shaman invited us for a second cup, I jumped up. Hoping a higher dose might remove the choice of going deep and force mind to quiet and release. Another hour passed and I was near giving up, then my body grew tired, fell to the mat, mind drifted then plummeted to a new space of awareness. I smiled and sighed at the familiar plant medicine vortex before fully dropping in, here we go.
Swampy. Dark. Wet. That’s the world I was dropped into. Around it I walked, looked around, I saw snakes coiling in muddy waters and malevolent panthers lurking in the shadows. I drudged through this space as memories from my past came in and out of it. I saw these memories with a new lens. A lens framed by the new manifested reality I was in, one of disgust and deep sadness.
I remembered my intention, to receive guidance in creating something new. I felt frustration and resistance. I thought, I want beauty and joy and love in this new life, not disgust and pain. Aya stubbornly thrusted me deeper into this world at that thought, telling me this must be felt and understood and released before beauty can come.
I then saw myself as a child. The simplicity in my east coast small-town childhood from climbing trees to running barefoot to catching fireflies to watching thunderstorms to laughing and playing with my 3 siblings to being held and rocked by my mom. I cried in how much love and beauty and alignment with my truth those simple moments held in my heart.
I was next shown the symbolic running I’ve done since leaving home. Away from that simplicity. Towards what I thought was more. An incessant chase for bigger, better, cities, travel, tech, leadership, success, wealth, achievement, seeking better better bigger bigger. The contrast was clear and painful. Light to dark. Truth to mask.
I watched it all in awe. Why? What have I been running from?
It was difficult. It’s difficult even writing it, going back to that darkness and ruthless realizations I experienced in those 6 hours. At points I said to myself, this is really bad, I am shattered, who will pick up these pieces. I heard Tim Ferriss’ voice saying Ayahuasca is not something to be taken lightly. That people can completely break from it, get unhinged in a way that takes months or years to repair.
I had prepared, knew that meeting my shadows wouldn’t be easy, but I couldn’t have predicted the feeling. There was a painful sense that I may never leave, that this was my new reality, the conviction and fear in that was so intense that I wanted to just give up fall asleep and never wake up.
I’m writing this vulnerably and honestly because that’s my promise to you always with these posts. This isn’t an easy path, psychedelics aren’t always dancing in a field of flowers because life isn’t always that way. And when using these medicines for this purpose, for healing and connecting to your truth, I promise you will meet what’s blocking you from doing so. I also promise you it’s worth it, if you’re supported in handling the aftermath and integrating what you experience.
For me, that was a darkness I hadn’t let myself see. After experiencing it so poignantly, I noticed a familiarity in it. A feeling I’ve had, one that’s ebbed and flowed throughout my life. One that drove the chasing, the seeking. One that fed an illusion that I was running towards vs. running from. A darkness that if I never allowed myself to meet, I couldn’t have begun to release it and rest.
When I started to ease out, I was grateful to find the experience to be temporary. That my mind and soul wouldn’t be stuck in that dark place forever. But I returned heavy, confused, and exhausted. While the others stayed in the maloca, connecting, sharing, reveling, I peeled myself up and shuffled slowly and quietly down the moonlit hill back to my hut. I looked at my journal and shook my head, the thought of making sense of all this a daunting task I couldn’t begin to think about. I collapsed and closed my eyes, hoping more clarity would come tomorrow.
After a month of reflection, I feel like a new person in more ways than one. It’s said a psychedelic experience can be 10 years of therapy in one night, I now see the truth in that, but I also believe it can be the pain of 10 years of therapy in one night. The support I had from Ian-Michael and others and the work I did in the days and weeks that followed is how that pain turned to healing, change, love, awareness, and compassion that continues to unfold and grow today.