TAKING AYAHUASCA IN THE JUNGLE: FROM NIGHT TILL THE DAWN OF… YOUR BEING

During the journeys we have been doing for more than fifteen years in the Amazon jungle where we have brought hundreds of people to meet the shamans of Putumayo, we have been living through magical, heavenly nights, healing madness where each one of them had a unique spiritual mark engraved.

The ceremony starts around 10pm and lasts until dawn, the taita, as shamans or traditional doctors are called there, opens the ceremony by blessing the yagé with a prayer of protection and inviting participants to drink a gourd full of it.

Then a veil of silence falls over the “maloca”, the building where the spiritual session with ayahuasca are conducted. They call it “medicine” without any fear of making a mistake or insulting science, as they have been studying the many physical, psychological and spiritual benefits of this brew since ancient times; after thousands of years of practice, they know it is more than a medicine because it does not only work on the physical body or on a particular part of it, but has a holistic approach on the person taking it, it is a living spirit materialized in a fluid that goes through each cell of the drinker.

In this silence the shaman begins to sing “icaros”, the ritual chants used to inspire and guide the journey into the deepest regions of the soul and the universe; he starts with low sounds in order to lower the energy vibration and to enable participants to go down into their shadows, their unconscious and feel what is happening to them.

Once they internally walk through these obscure places, the shaman begins to sing higher and higher pitched ícaros, and may then be accompanied by a flute, a harmonica or a guitar until he starts singing with lyrics in our language; the ícaros are unintelligible for us on a verbal level, the purpose is to raise the energy and thus expand the state of consciousness with no defined limit enabling each participant to get insights into and healings from what interferes with the free expansion of his or her being.

Once in that state, ayahuasca seems to dance within the body with the songs and induces a state of physical heaviness known as “la chuma”. Although it is possible to overcome it -it depends on the inner strength of each person- to get up and dance and celebrate life and the understandings emerging from one’s own connection with consciousness.

During the ceremony it is possible to take ayahuasca several times: the shaman determines it thanks to his years of experience; we generally drink with the “elder taitas”, ie, the taitas who have been using traditional medicine for many, many year and whom we have known for a long time.

When someone is vomiting in the jungle one can feel how the energy of the earth takes him down, feeling how the soil absorbs the sickness, the blockages, suffering and characters, one feels how it all stays underground to become food for life, a true transmutation of pain. It is possible that after the ingestion and with closed eyes one has visions in which whatever is happening can be seen with clarity and the speed of lightning; these visions are the tangible surface of emotions and understandings of a very profound nature and they sometimes shape into an amalgam known as “la pinta”, an oasis of inner healing decorated with the most beautiful colours ever seen, a mystical gift that is thrown into his consciousness with love and sweetness to delight him in a psycho-nautical dance.

After the breakout of the produced energy and the purges, one can feel a healing, an inner cleansing and a new state of health naturally happening after this process. This state of consciousness of one’s health and release is known as “el alivio” (the relief)

Sometimes, before and during the ceremony, the Taita may offer complementary medicines such as “rape” (ground tobacco leaves), which is blown through the nose with a projector opening and awakening the person, inducing an ideal state of meditation, with clear nasal passages to breathe and with a well-balanced energy between the brain’s hemispheres.

It is impossible to describe the infinite individual variety of experiences of the participants as well as the collective energy during a ceremony and the friendships that results from sharing such a supreme experience; so when the sun begins to caress the morning dew, the only thing filling one’s heart is an ineffable feeling of compassion and gratitude towards all existence and oneself for feeling worthy of this gift from mother nature to her children human beings.

We go to the Jungle every 11th till 22nd of each month and stay at our property, the Hostel Casa del Rio, offering all the amenities to rest after such intense days and nights.

For bookings or to request any further information call: Silvia + 39 320 45 27 064 (via WhatsApp) or write to [email protected]