So, you’re drinking Ayahuasca or you’re considering on drinking Ayahuasca and you want to make sure that you don’t have a bad trip.

Maybe you’ve heard from your friends or you’ve read on the internet that people go crazy, they lose their minds, they go through hell.

Somebody told you something that is making you doubt or it has you in a little bit of fear because there’s something you want to heal, something you want to explore.

You don’t want to end up more traumatized, right? It’s a fair question.

I’m going to share with you 4 tips on how to ensure you don’t have a bad trip with Ayahuasca, this is my personal experience with a few years drinking the medicine, probably over a 100 times facilitating and supporting hundreds of people in their own journey.

Helping people go through very difficult trips, very rough healing processes.

These will be my suggestions to you.

• Your breath:

Your breath is your anchor, it’s the part of your body that connects your mind to your physiology, you will never see a person that is very calm, grounded and peaceful, breathing hysterically.

At the same time you won’t see someone anxious, paranoid and overwhelmed breathing calmly.

Your breath is the fastest way during a ceremony or during your day to come back to your center.

If you pay attention, every time that you’re overwhelmed and that your mind is agitated, your breath is either fast-paced or shallow.

Make sure that you breathe deep into your belly, not only on your chest, but you place your hand on your belly, making sure that when you inhale, your belly is filled in, slowly, exhaling from your belly too.

Also from your nose only, this is the first step.

If you can control your breath during a ceremony, you may see something challenging, difficult, maybe you’re feeling scared, anxious, then it’ll be a matter of 1-2 minutes until your system comes down.

Here’s a trick most people don’t know:

Our lungs and our capacity is quite limited, even if we do a deep inhale, we’re not filling in our lungs fully.

However, if we do two consecutive breaths quickly, our capacity is massively extended.

Try it, you’ll see that on the second quick breath there’s a deeper capacity to absorb air that comes into your system. We recommend that you watch the video to have a full understanding of this.

If you exhale even two or three times, you may already feel relaxation through your body.

So if you’re in the middle of a bad trip, but your mind is all over the place, breath is the anchor that grounds you.

• Spend time in nature:

When people have a very rough experience where they vomit themselves, screaming, they may not remember a lot of what happened the next day.

It’s usually because there’s too much energy running through their system and they’re not used to it, it’s like plugging a toaster that can handle 120V into a power outlet that will burst it with 5000V.

It would explode, it’s impossible for it to handle it, unless it were properly grounded.

You can ground your body through breath, for sure.

But also spending time in nature before heading to ceremony, if you can do it barefoot, you can touch a tree or dirt if you have a garden.

The more that you spend in nature, the more grounded your body will become.

When you’re in ceremony, you can take your shoes and socks off, place your feet firmly on the ground, sitting upright, palms facing downwards, laying on your thighs – this will ground you too.

There’s also a practice that has been around for thousands of years, designed with the main intention of allowing your body to be in deep balance, then open itself up to a stronger, higher and more intense energies.

That is Hatha Yoga, especially the traditional Hatha Yoga.

If you can do this at least a month or at least a few weeks before you come or go to ceremony then you can go through very, very profound experiences without being agitated.

Without feeling like you’re losing control, which is most people’s fear.

To prepare your body, you want to spend time in nature barefoot, hopefully touching the earth, plants, a tree.

In the ceremony if you’re feeling overwhelmed, you can sit properly with your palms facing downwards.

Most importantly, Hatha Yoga, it will increase your mind and body’s capacity to navigate very intense energies, it’s a day and night experience.

We recommend to people that come to work with us that at least a month out they do some form of Hatha Yoga, it’s very simple, you can practice it at home.

If you go on YouTube right now you can find 5-10 minutes of a simple class.

• Prepare properly:

If you eat poorly, have sex with a lot of different people or a couple of days before your ceremony, taken a lot of substances, treating this recreationally, like it’s just a game.

Do not be surprised if the medicine treats it like it’s just a game aswell, sometimes the medicine can be quite strict, in the sense that it demands respect because it’s a sacred process.

When people come without having prepared or with an attitude of i don’t care then the medicine will react like that too.

“I don’t care either, here, you’re gonna go into a deep experience and you’ll figure it out.“

One of the best ways to avoid a bad trip is preparing properly, especially with your food, taking breaks from social media.

What you fit into your mind and the people that you’re in touch with. In an ideal world, you’ll spend as much time in nature only with your loved ones or alone and not reading or scrolling through social media endlessly.

Eating healthy foods, hopefully vegetarian or plant-based, this also has a tremendous impact, i’ve had ceremonies that have been really, really challenging for me.

Because a few days ago i was eating ice cream with milk or i was eating meat.

During ceremony i had a rough time, a very difficult time navigating a lot of emotions, but then i found out the emotions were coming from the food that was in my system.

Maybe from something that i had read online, so.

Please, prepare properly, if you want to have a trip that is nourishing and not overwhelming.

• No such thing as a “Bad trip”:

The most important one, what i mentioned prior, if you have a trip that is overwhelming, most of the time you get a lesson.

Sometimes the lesson is that you need to work on your body, sometimes it’s you needing to reconnect to your breath.

Sometimes the lesson is that you have to stop drinking milk, eating meat, drinking alcohol, taking certain substances.

There’s no such thing as a “bad trip“, because a bad trip means it is unpleasant, but most of the unpleasant things in life lead to very beautiful things if done consciously.

When you were born, i’m sure it wasn’t very pleasant for your mother, childbirth is probably the most painful experiences that a woman can have.

When you go to the gym, it’s not very pleasant, but you feel the vitality, the health, the strength.

Starting a business, a relationship, these things are not pleasant all the time, they’re quite challening, but also to the same degree, they’re nourishing.

Just the fact that your ceremonies are unpleasant don’t mean they’re bad, it means that maybe there’s a lot to purge, to cleanse, a lot for you to understand.

There’s a lot of rejection from your mind.

The fourth tip is to put your judgements aside and open yourself up to the possibility that whether it is bliss and rainbows, talking Gods and Goddesses.

Meeting God for the first time, feeling that you scored your life’s purpose or whether it’s confusing and overwhelming.

This is what you need, that is a beautiful gift.

Look at it, be present, receive it with full open arms.

If you get a lot of shit, use it to plant the seeds of something else, as the bricks with which you build a stronger foundation for who you are.

Personally, i love when a trip is beautiful, when i learn and it’s smooth.

But it has been the difficult ones the ones that have changed my life the most, i wouldn’t consider them bad, just challening in the moment.

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 check:

www.ayahuascacolombia.com/retreats