You probably had a rough journey with a psychedelic, maybe someone that is close to you had a bad trip and now they came out more traumatized than before.

They went in, so you may be wondering:

Are these psychedelics safe, did i or my friend break our minds, how can i heal from the damage that i or my friends may have caused to themselves by using (and quite often playing) with substances that they don’t quite understand.

I’m going to tell you a couple of things that you can do, especially if you’ve been working with Ayahuasca and the container/shaman/medicine anything else wasn’t done in a way that was conductive for a betterment of your life.

If you came out in a worse shape or you feel a little bit traumatized from what you lived, maybe it was too intense, maybe it was too overwhelming.

Maybe you don’t remember anything but you feel a lot of heavy emotions, then keep reading.

Let’s start with What is Trauma.

I’m no doctor so i’m going to oversimplify, to a degree, so that we can understand and work together with this.

Trauma, in my understanding through the work with the medicine, has been anything and everything that does not get resolved that anchors us into an unsustainable way of being.

In other words, it’s energy that gets trapped inside your body and doesn’t find resolution and because it doesn’t find resolution it ends up becoming a cyclical, perhaps emotion or situation that you go through until you’re able to resolve it.

For example, if you had a parent that was very violent – in that moment when your parents came and maybe were gonna hit you/were verbally abusive, you went into fight-or-flight.

This is something that happens across all animals in the world, when a predator comes or when a situation of danger arises, they go into fight-or-flight mode.

It is a state in which your body instantly reacts, producing cortisol, you receive an adrenal response, which means that now you’re hypercharged and then your mind makes a split second decision around:

Am i strong enough to kill this predator or is it better that i use this excess energy to run away very fast to make sure that it doesn’t eat me?

Throughout most of the animal kingdom you will see that when the prey discovers that it’s about to be prayed on then it gets a split second of: “What do i do.“

Quite often they start running or fighting, and it will fight with way more strenght and energy that it would have otherwise, it will also run way faster than it would on its own accord.

There’s something quite interesting that happens in a lot of animals, once they have outrun the predator and everything is back into safety, they quite often have a somatic process.

Which means a process that involves the body, to release that excess energy that was stored.

Because they run very fast, but maybe they didn’t use up all the excess resources that the body created, so a lot of them go into catharsis.

They’ll get quite stiff and then almost like faint, a lot of them go into some very intense shaking for some time and then they stand up like nothing happened.

You will see the gazelle just chilling, eating grass again, hanging out, they’re not traumatized.

But if it happened to a human being, if a tiger just chased me and i had to run, i’ll be thinking: “Oh my god, i’m not safe, i’m afraid, where is the tiger?” Right?

Most of us carry that for the rest of our lives, maybe our parents were abusive and we carry that fear of men, maybe of women, maybe some judgement, maybe resentment.

Some pain that shows up in our romantic relationships.

The point here is that throughout the animal kingdom there’s a process to release that excess energy and humans – we have it as well.

We can scream, cry, shake, we can move quite often, we don’t do most of this but more importantly – when our parent is the person that is perpetuating the abuse or transgression then we can’t fight back.

We’re tiny, and if we were to have a violent parent, to fight them means that we’re getting into a lot more trouble.

We can’t fly, what are you gonna do? take our He-Man and Barbies and just leave home when you’re 6 years old?

The question of fighting or fleeing are not on the table, what ends up happening is that our body went into a situation of danger, an adrenal response was triggered but that energy did not find an escape, it wasn’t used.

And if our parents felt uncomfortable at our emotional expression, if your parents judge you if you were being too loud or too quiet, told to shut up or not allowed to cry as a child.

If as kids we couldn’t shake nor scream then that means that energy that you have released by kicking and screaming for a couple of minutes never left your body, and energy is not destroyed, it is transformed.

Quite often, the trauma ends up being something that stays within you, the problem here is that these excess chemicals that your body produce are not healthy in the long term.

They become toxic, to your tissue, your cells – you’ll find people that end up with throat cancer and quite often a lot of these people throughout their life felt like they had a ball on their throat.

This is because at one point they were made to shut up or wanted to yell/scream, maybe something was unfair and they wanted to use their voice to defend themselves but they didn’t.

Maybe they weren’t allowed to, maybe it wasn’t safe to do so, maybe fear just overtook them and they kept all of that inside.

Then if this is not processed later on in life, it can show up as a disease.

Trauma, in essence, is energy that has not found resolution, it’s stored pockets of toxicity that we carry with us.

That’s why every time that somebody touches us close to that area where it hurts we go into a fight-or-flight response.

When someone touches you close to the core of your trauma, it triggers a lot of things, that’s why we say: “Oh, you’re triggered.“

You have to be loaded to begin with, this is the essence of trauma.

Now, after working with a plant medicine or a psychedelic, you end up more traumatized – there are 4 things you can do:

• Tame the monster:

Maybe it was very chaotic, you felt like you were going crazy, you saw demons, entities maybe.

Your mind was a big mess and you don’t even want to think about it, this is the wrong way to approach it, because it can feel like a monster that is way too big to contend with.

What is the alternative? To journal about it, to write specifically what happened, what you felt, how you felt, what you saw.

Because putting it into words gives it structure, it’s no longer an infinite source of fear, now, maybe it’s a big source of fear, but big is better than infinite.

At least big you can see where it starts and where it ends, suddenly you can be a bit more at peace.

Because you know what you’re dealing with, so this can be by journaling in detail what happened or by speaking with somebody that you trust, somebody that understands you.

If you share about a very intense and dark experience with plant medicine to someone who has never had this kind of experiences, judgement is what you are very likely to receive, or misunderstandings.

But if you share with somebody that has experience in this, hopefully someone that can help you with integration they’ve probably been there a few times and can make you feel like you’re not crazy.

• Move the energy:

Again, there’s a stagnant energy in your system, maybe in your heart, throat, head from overthinking a lot, or on your lower centers.

The idea here is that if you can go into nature then kick and scream, focus on the area where you feel the pain accumulated or where energy was not released.

You give yourself a chance to willingly and consciously go into it, give yourself 30 minutes to 1 hour, there’s a lot that your body will cleanse, punch a pillow, kick, scream if you can.

Let that rage, grief or frustation out of your system, maybe in the medicine house that you were in, you were made to shut up, this is very common everywhere.

We have received people at our medicine house in Colombia that were not able to release some very debrided trauma because the moment they started crying or being vocal about it…

They were told to shut up or were kicked out of the temple by the Shaman.

We don’t do that, we allow people to have their experience, but in case that you were not allowed or in a place where you could have your experience, make sure you create a space for that.

Pay attention to where in your body you feel that pain.

Where was the trauma generated, then put a timer and go a little bit crazy within a conscious container.

Let it out, kick and scream.

Quite often this is enough for most people, now, if it isn’t, then step number three:

• Cleanse yourself:

Sometimes we gather things that are not ours from other people, energies from the space, from a medicine that was not prepared carefully, a Shaman that had ugly intentions.

Then we think “It’s my mind.” Maybe it’s not your mind, maybe it’s something from the place that you decided to drink medicine with.

So, what to do? This you have to test for yourself, i don’t ask you to believe blindly, but if you are out of options you might as well try.

3 days. One day before, during and after new moon, then one day before, during and after full moon.

Go to the nearest waterfalls or river where you can swim of course, ensuring that it is a safe place for you to do.

You want a high volume of water that is always flowing, not a swimming pool or artificial waters.

The ocean is okay, but it’s better to have a river or a waterfall – go there on these days and stay at least 30 minutes ideally under a strong current, ensure that it touches you from the top of your head.

This cleanses a lot of things, it re-harmonizes a lot in the system, and when it’s a new, full moon, a lot of energy inside our bodies move in an easier way.

This is why a lot of enlightened beings choose full moons and new moons to lift their body, to go into Samadhi or enlightened states.

This also works in a context of purifying yourself, so if you feel that there’s a lot of trauma or there was some darkness that is lingering around you.

Go and do this new moon – full moon.

Let the water cleanse you, set an intention, ask it: “Please water energy, cleanse everything that is not conducive to me being in harmony with my internal waters, with my internal emotions, my internal thoughts.“

Quite often this is also enough at our center, if somebody is a little too dissociated from a very deep experience or a very dark one, we bring them to the waterfalls, the crystalline waterfalls.

Then right after everyone is reset energetically.

If you haven’t tried please do that.

Then finally, point number four:

• Reach out for help:

If you’ve tried all of these things and there’s still something that you can’t understand, there’s energy that remains stuck, yet you’ve shaked, moved, and integrated it, then reach out and ask for help.

You can comment here, send me an email, join my Ayahuasca integration courses, maybe the Shaman is a good friend of yours or you have friends in that community that can support you.

Do not suffer alone, it has been proven that a lot of times trauma is not only what happens to us, but how we experience trauma is not only the pain that you felt, but maybe you felt lonely, alone in your path.

It has been proven that two people can go through the same experience, but one of them has a friend that they can share openly and cry with, to voice what happened to one another.

The other person just feels isolated because maybe they felt that everybody would judge them if they were to share their truths, this person ends up severely traumatized and this person went through pain, but overcame it.

They key difference is that the trauma is not what happened, but the story that was created around it.

For this person it’s the story of “I am alone, nobody gets me” – For this other person it was painful but they feel like they can trust, there’s good people around them.

To wrap it up:

You want to understand that it’s just energy, there’s no need to judge it.

Trauma is energy that got stuck and it’s causing havoc in your life, there are ways to move it, psychotherapy is a way to do it in a very slow, long way, also very gentle way.

Ayahuasca is that way where it’s shaking out of you quite abruptly, sometimes there’s everything in between movement, Yoga, different things.

If your experience led you to a bit more pain, make sure that it doesn’t develop roots.

The sooner that you take care of these things, the less they’re gonna have a negative impact in your life and you may even learn a thing or two about yourself, about life.

About the nature of your emotions, the nature of suffering and understanding, of trauma in the process.

Hopefully one day you can help somebody else who needs it.

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