These are the 3 things i wish i knew before my first Ayahuasca ceremony, i want to share with you exactly the things that nobody told me about that made a very, very big difference in my experience with plant medicine.

1. Preparation
   It’s just as important as integration, a lot of people talk about the diet before going, the foods you can eat, the foods you need, things you should and shouldn’t do, but very few people really highlight the importance of keeping that for at least 2-3 weeks AFTER your ceremony.
   
   Some Shamans here in Colombia say that the post-care is even more important than what you did before, they say that the work that you did before is necessary just for you to not struggle so much when you receive the medicine, but the after work is necessary.
   
   So that fragile seed that was planted within you has a chance at sprouting, so that all your lessons that you carry with you, the insights, the healing, can have a solid chance at being lasting changes.
   
   So it’s very, very important that with the same intensity, love and discipline, you take care of how you’re eating and what you’re consuming on social media, sex, substances and all of these things with the same intensity and impeccability.
   
   Pay attention to how you are and what you do after a ceremony, because after a ceremony, the plant is inside of you, what this means is that your sensitivity is increased, you’re a lot more conscious.
   
   If you do something that, is not bad but useless for you, if you do something that is taking you in the opposite direction of where you want to go – since you have more energy and you’re more conscious, you’ll dig yourself in a deeper hole.
   
   Prepare the best that you can, and most importantly, integrate, make time to spend just as long to take care of your body, what you consume, your sexual habits, substances.
   
   
2. Ayahuasca will give you the experience that you need, not necessarily the one you want:
   I wish somebody had told me this way back then, sometimes you will do a little bit of both, but most importantly.
   
   A lot of people come and they want a very sublime experience, they have heard that you can die and see God, talk to nature, see spirits of the land, hear voices, receive downloads, visions, insights, teachings.
   
   Not to say this cannot happen, it does happen, just not for everybody and not all of the time, let me tell you a quick story:
   
   There was a woman that came to a retreat and drank medicine the first 3 days, she was very frustrated, angry and resentful.
   
   She felt misled and a little bit betrayed by our team because she didn’t have the experience she thought she was going to have.
   
   She felt that she was gonna have a very enlightening, beautiful, loving experience but she was revisiting old trauma, whereas a lot of these nights she was just sitting in a lot of anger and frustration.
   
   Because the person next to her was being a bit too loud, because she didn’t like the music, because she doesn’t understand the music, many reasons.
   
   She was sitting just in anger her whole ceremony, expecting for her experience to be different, then, i came to her and i asked her.
   
   “It makes sense that you’re feeling this way but tell me something, what did you come to work on this retreat?” she said, “Well, i’m very impatient and i have a lot of anger, it has cost me a lot of relationships and i want to change that.“
   
   I look at her and i asked, “Okay, so you’re here to work with your patience, your anger.” she said “Yeah.”
   
   “You have been feeling nothing but impatient and angry these days…” she went quiet.
   
   Because in that moment she understood that the medicine was bringing up those emotions that she wanted to work with, to actually pay attention to them, it was just not bringing them up in the way that she imagined.
   
   Trust your experience, if you’re not having an experience THAT is your experience, this has happened many times to others and to me.
   
   I have high expectations and suddenly i’m sitting in frustration, sometimes that ceremony is an invitation to refine your capacity for attention, to connect to something subtle, to really be present or connect your body and your breath.
   
   Trust the experience that you have, go with an intention but do not be attached to how it’s going to show up.
   
   
3. Choose the right place to do it:
   This may be the most important one, the very first time that i went to ceremony was with a very respected Shaman here in Colombia, i won’t mention his name, but he was in a cottage.
   
   Nobody told me that it was going to be outside of the cottage, by the edge of the house, that i should have brought a mattress and pillows, sleeping bags, blankets, a warm coat and so on.
   
   So i came with a t-shirt and it was up in the mountains, i had a very bad night in that place, they didn’t give you a bucket for your purging, so if you felt like vomiting you just had to find a place in the garden or in nature to do it.
   
   The bathrooms were not very clean, there was no toilet paper, everything there was a lack of structure, lack of organization, so i went, nobody cared about how i prepared.
   
   Nobody cared about the experience that i had, which was a very awful and difficult one, nobody cared what happened afterwards, nobody really cared about the house, about making sure that the people that came had a basic level of comfort.
   
   It’s not that this is a vacation or a luxurious experience, it is not your nature, you’re traveling to Colombia to go deep within yourself but there’s some very basic needs that must be met in order for you to be able to relax and lean into the experience.
   
   I tried different places when i drank the medicine, until i found this one where i’m sitting in front of today and i realized that for me at least (and for people who have been in this path for long enough).
   
   Doing and drinking Ayahuasca in someone’s house or cottage may be okay, in the best case scenarios, but very often it’s not a good idea.
   
   Especially if in the house they don’t have a sort of energetic hygiene with spaces, when you drink Ayahuasca you become hyper conscious, which means you’re more connected to your enviroment.
   
   If you’re in nature, that is beautiful, because nature will teach you, nature is a frequency that remains in harmony, no matter how much man touches it, a tree will always be a tree.
   
   It’s free from ego – the ego that nature has is very, very subtle, almost non-existent, so when you connect and you deepen your consciousness in a space like this, it nourishes you.
   
   It supports your journey, however, i have had times when i drank medicine in someone’s house and the place was not properly taken care of.
   
   Then suddenly, i’m feeling things that don’t feel mine, i’m seeing things that feel very heavy, dark, i’m having memories that i don’t think are mine.
   
   I started realizing that it feels like there’s just a lot of the owners of the house in the space or if there are a lot of ceremonies then there’s a lot of past retreat participants in that area.
   
   And that was affecting my own experience, not to say it’s impossible to have a good, meaningful experience in those places, but if it’s your first time, you want to do everything you can to support a deep and safe journey.
   
   

• This means you prepare properly, and you make sure that you integrate properly, it also means that you trust the experience that you’re having.
  
• You come with an intention, but you trust what the medicine gives you.
  
• Find a place that is safe, that you can trust, where there’s a basic level of comfort at least provided at the least provided, ideally in nature.
  
  

If you feel the calling to sit with Ayahuasca, in a container held by Colombian shamans at a sacred temple in the middle of the mountain forests please go to: https://ayahuascacolombia.com/retreats