How do we make the most out of our Ayahuasca ceremony?

There are 3 things that you need to keep in mind:

• What happens before you attend ceremony.
• What happens during ceremony.
• What happens after ceremony.

These are very important, imagine it’s like a surgery.

Before the surgery happens, you may need a special diet: staying off substances, off alcohol, other things that affect negatively the procedure.

During the surgery you have to sit still until the end, maybe you’re sedated but you have to make sure that you don’t walk away before you’re stitched up.

You want to make sure you control your anxiety and nervousness so you don’t affect the doctor’s job.

Finally, there’s an after-care, rubbing with alcohol, not straining your system, not doing things that may rip away the stitches that you have.

So, before, during and after.

It’s the same for Ayahuasca.

• Pay attention to how you prepare.

Before, you want to make sure that you prepare the best that you can through whatever comes in your system, that can be through your mouth, eyes, ears, even through your skin and your mind.

You do this with as much impeccability and commitment as it’s possible, this is a process that is not complicated but it’s very nuanced if you want to really, really go deep and avoid having bad trips.

To summarize, you want to make sure that the food that you’re eating is clean, conductive to a good trip.

But also that the information that you’re consuming is conductive to it, information can be whatever you look at in social media.

Endless scrolling is gonna be terrible if you drink Ayahuasca, consuming social media mindlessly, but also if you’re engaging in conversations with people, especially conversations that are about nonsense: gossip, judgment.

Maybe your family or your friends are instilling fears on you about your thoughts or your desire to participate in a ceremony, the music that you listen to has certain vibrations, frequencies…

This has been proved (None of that hippie nonsense, as a lot of people imagine this to be) through actual science, you can see there’s flowers that wilt if you play death metal to them.

They will bloom a lot faster and bigger if you play classical music, same with cows, they’ll lactate more under certain music.

Water, the structure of the molecules will arrange itself or disorganize itself based on the music that is being played around it.

You want to be mindful of everything that goes inside of you, because this is going to affect the process.

A lot of people spend 2/3, maybe 90% of their journeys with Ayahuasca dealing and clearing up all the nonsense that they put inside, which isn’t necessary.

You can have an experience that is based on growth, healing and transformation. Not too much on processing the food that you ate, the things you watched, the music that you heard.

First, pay attention to how you prepare, do so with commitment.

• Focus, don’t get distracted.

Secondly, essentially, this is mostly about your body and your mind.

Because a bad trip just means that you lost control or connection with your mind or your body, maybe with both.

You pooped your pants, you felt like you went crazy, dying, many things can happen.

Grounding your body and your mind, there are different tips and tricks about how to breathe.

You want to prepare before and during ceremony, so, a couple of quick tips:

If the experience is too intense, try to sit down, spine erect, placing your hands palms facing down, then breathe deeply, not allowing your face to be buried in the bucket.

A lot of people have the tendency to grab their bucket, dipping their head and staying like that for a long time. You just vomited something out of your system that was very dense, yet you’re keeping it close to your head.

Like breathing the fumes of what you just released, you’re gonna be stuck in that for a long time, so vomit and put it away, aside, if you need it grab it once again.

Don’t look around, focus on what’s going on inside, close your eyes!

People get anxious when they start looking: “Am i the only one who’s tripping? Hows the Shaman? Is this place safe?“

If you feel insecure, then it’s inside of you, deal with that.

Do not distract yourself, like staring at the fire.

There are times and places to do that, but the juice that you’re gonna get from this experience, the deepest fruits, are gonna come from having your eyes closed, sitting comfortably and breathing deeply.

If you lay down when the experience is getting too intense – for a lot of people – that makes them cross the threshold of what they can handle, then it gets overwhelming.

Some people actually find comfort in going under their blankets, getting into a fetal position, you can play with this.

But make it a conscious choice, so as the experience is happening, you want to keep your mind and your body at ease.

If you can, practice Hatha Yoga, this is extremely good to keep your body and your mind in a relaxed state, able to navigate more energy.

Finally, what happens afterwards is the:

• Integration process.

Maybe i released so many things during my ceremonies, how do i make sure that when i come back the change stays with me.

That it doesn’t become like a workshop high or just another psychedelic trip that: was fun and interesting – then i come back to my same habits, to my same addictions, my same worries.

To the same pain.

The key of integration is to keep what you were doing when you prepared, keep a clean diet on what you consume, what you eat, what you read, what you listen to.

Because your body is now charged and the seeds you plant will be vulnerable and fragile when they’re growing, like a baby.

You put some solid fences around it, when it becomes a solid oak tree, you can remove the fences.

Almost nothing can tear it down, nothing can destroy it,

Ayahuasca plants in you some seeds of deep transformation, your job for the month after you come back from ceremony, to really nourish them, to water them.

To take care of them.

This means being very mindful of where you spend time, what places you go into, learning how to discern the spaces, the people, the friendships that are good for you and those that are not.

There’s a whole process for this, but slowing down, just enough to breathe deeply.

When you eat something, close your eyes and feel what it does to your body. A lot of times we eat in a compulsive manner and we don’t notice that.

Our body rejects a lot of the stuff that we’re putting into it, we’re used to just rushing through things, maybe we eat while we’re looking at our phone or watching tv.

All of these things have to go if you want to live consciously, the way that you eat, the way that you shower, the way that you walk.

It should all be done consciously, part of integration is making a commitment to keep a clean diet, to keep a clean living afterwards.

So that those seeds can go deeper into you, and you will see that your sensitivity increases, your love for life increases, your sense of peace, the quality of your relationships, everything starts blooming in a beautiful way, the opposite is also true.

If you learn, and you’re shown certain things, yet you don’t make a change, you go back and you betray yourself.

Now you know what’s good for you, maybe before you didn’t, you were confused.

Now you know, and you betray that, anxiety and depression are the common side effects of betraying our truth.

Ayahuasca can help you change your life if you’re ready for it and commit for it.

But for a lot of people it creates more chaos, because suddenly, they cannot numb themselves to the truth, and that truth may require that a lot of what you’re doing:

Your job, your relationships, your habits.

It may require for these things to go, that you give up and let go all of this, with the promise of that which is for you.

To figure out the promise of peace, of harmony, of life, of purpose, of meaning and of bliss.

It isn’t easy, it takes work, that’s for sure.

It’s supposed to take work, that’s what makes this adventure fun.

So, if you’ve been thinking of drinking Ayahuasca then be mindful of what you do.

Before, during and after.

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