Original subtitles

Why has the world become so fascinated with ayahuasca?

Very good question.

My name is Howard Lawler.

I grew up in the rural areas of Kentucky in North America.

My interest in shamanism began very early in my life as a child. My

grandmother was a renowned healer, and I was known in those parts as a Kentucky

root doctor.

Of course, when I was a child, I had no knowledge of shamanism per se, but my

grandmother would tell me stories of how she learned about medicinal plants from

her grandmother, who was a full-blood Cherokee Shawnee Native American.

So that inspired a keen interest in Native American culture.

The first sacred plant that I came in contact with was peyote in the Native

American church tradition.

That's where I began my practice and my relationship with the sacred plants.

In the early 90s, I had the opportunity to come to Peru, and that opened a door

to engage another modality of core shamanism, which is the Amazonian

practices involving ayahuasca.

My first mission in my connection with ayahuasca was actually for my own

personal healing of acute chronic depression, which I'd fallen into a few

years prior to that period of time.

which produced amazing results, essentially healing my depression in the

course of just a few ceremonies.

And through that, I saw the huge potential of this to help a lot of

people. So in 1995, I established the

Ayahuasca Spirit Quest Healing and Higher Consciousness Program here in the

Amazon.

It was at that time one of only three organized opportunities for that kind of

connection available here.

The topic of ayahuasca has unfolded dramatically, exponentially indeed, in

the past five to ten years.

Prior to that, there was a very small base of interest in esoteric circles,

but generally it was unknown to the Western world.

Ayahuasca is a traditional plant medicine originating in the Amazon.

It is a holistic medicine that has many healing applications, dealing with

psychological, physical, emotional, and spiritual illnesses and conditions.

Ayahuasca certainly has healing properties that directly affect a rather

wide range of conditions that are not effectively treated by Western medicine.

Ayahuasca is perhaps the most effective treatment for depression because it

addresses that condition on both a biochemical, physiological, and

psychological level. And in many cases, people having suffered depression for

long periods of time after working with ayahuasca find that they do not go back

to those feelings and they experience a permanent relief.

The same is true for anxiety issues, phobias of various types, irrational

fears of things.

stress and trauma disorders post-traumatic stress disorder and

things of this nature there are many many accounts of remissions of various

types of cancer following work with ayahuasca usually in a more extensive

manner probably the the most profound improvements in in physical conditions

that we've seen in our work are with people with parkinson's disease and

multiple sclerosis

neurophysiological disorders in general seem to be improved rather quickly at

least symptomatically through even short-term medication with ayahuasca

what

brought me here to peru for ayahuasca was

really just a short experience i had back in the states about a year and a

half ago with dmt the very opening experience and helped me realize that

the things that i struggle with aren't who i am and that they can be washed

away with a little bit of work and i had a ferocious appetite i'm learning more

about ayahuasca and what it was after that i've been dealing with depression

for most of my life ever since i was around 12 years old and i don't know

nothing's worked i mean i've dealt with so many things and tried so many meds

and different kinds of therapy and you know it's still very unhappy ayahuasca

seems to have a good track record helping people deal with things like

depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and things i've had to deal

with so it seemed like it was worth giving a try i first heard about

ayahuasca from my best friend who got a fair bit into spirituality discovering

more about himself and in turn i was trying to discover a bit more about

myself

When he showed me a documentary on ayahuasca, I was very intrigued about

how it helped so many people with so many issues and it led me here.

Most people have a tendency to think of pleasant experiences as good experiences

and difficult, challenging, or hard experiences as bad experiences.

When working with ayahuasca, those criteria are not really legitimate

simply because the very nature of ayahuasca is to bring up things that

people would otherwise tend to avoid dealing with.

And this is one of the greatest attributes of ayahuasca from the

standpoint of personal auto-psychoanalysis, as it were,

enabling those issues to come up, to come to the surface, so that they can be

confronted, addressed, and hopefully resolved in the conscious mind, or at

least that process initiated.

Very often, these processes of confrontation are very unpleasant, very

difficult, very challenging.

In reality, those experiences tend to be the most beneficial in the long run,

providing the person is able to allow the process to run its course, to allow

those things to come up, to engage in the hard work of processing those

revelations and those confrontations.

Ayahuasca is an opener.

Ayahuasca is a potentiator.

It brings things to the surface that remain...

often otherwise deeply submerged in the subconscious.

It's hard, hard work.

People don't come out here to do this for fun.

It's been pretty grueling with some experiences.

You really get your butt kicked and you learn really quickly to fight, you know,

or to resist, to overanalyze, to overthink.

Really does a disservice to you.

In my experience, the more you can live in your heart and live through your

soul, live through your nature, that's when you really start to figure out what

life's about.

This will actually be my second time doing ayahuasca. This experience this

year has been so much more rewarding, so much deeper for me.

It's been a gift, you know, really, to...

come a long way and really know to let go you know and follow your heart it

sounds so cliche but it's so true

A lot of the ceremonies, even at their hardest, were just terrific because

either you fly and you have just a very good experience that makes you feel

good. Perhaps you might have visions. A lot of times they can be really

difficult. But even the hard ceremonies where you're suffering a lot of it, when

you become aware enough, you realize the beauty and your plight and the beauty

and the plight of all of us. And it's not to say we can't improve and make

each other's lives better.

No, I'm not saying that or suggesting that.

I'm just saying there's so much opportunity for growth. And every

hardship, every trouble we have is really just a blessing in disguise.

And that's just the other dimension to life.

And I would not have that had I not been to Peru the first time and this time.

So it's just been incredible.

Sometimes when you're in your rut, you know, whatever it is, you think you're

alone. You think you've got it the worst. You think no one would

understand.

And in this process, you know, in these ceremonies and these talking circles

afterwards, you realize that everybody's having a similar fight on a fundamental

level. And it's just profound.

When one comes to work with ayahuasca, an appropriate amount of preparation,

training, and guidance is extremely helpful, beneficial, indeed for most

people essential, in order to be prepared for some of the surprises that

ayahuasca often brings to help people diminish expectations that are

unwarranted. There's a tendency often for people to expect or desire ayahuasca

to be what they want it to be rather than...

being capable of surrendering to it and allowing it to work as it naturally

does.

The preparation must focus perhaps first and foremost on intention, that is to

say the reasons why a person wants to undertake the process.

It's important to understand that work with ayahuasca is a process and not a

singular event.

All of the benefits of ayahuasca cannot be realized in a single in a single

session or in many cases even a single cycle of work.

I am actually hopeful that You know, when I get back, I'll be able to do what

needs to be done to get to the next step to be happy again.

She made it very clear. She's like, I can't take you there, but I can show you

the way.

And she did a very good job of that the other night.

And the nice thing is she gave me several hours of what the finish line

is. So I know what I'm aiming for. I know why it's worth it.

She just showed me infinite love.

And that was the word that just came up over and over again and the experience

of it. I mean, it's beyond words, obviously, but just the space of

infinite love and anything else is crap.

Everything else is just a distraction from that infinite space that we all

live in that we just forgot about.

And any time I started to...

lose it a little bit she'd take me right back to it just like to hammer it home

just this is what you're going for this is what it's all about i mean this i

mean i would never say that this work is for any everyone it's not easy nobody

it's not a fun experience and you definitely have to be prepared for it i

think like it took me 10 years to get to the point where i felt comfortable with

trying it because it can be terrifying it can be infinitely frustrating the

first few attempts were very frustrating for me but i just kept with it and And

there was always an insight you would get, and for me it was in the sharing

circle the next day when I'd listen to other people talk, and it wouldn't

necessarily be their experiences, but something about being in that shared

space, I would start to process what I learned from the night before, even if

it felt like nothing at the time.

I would be able to go into the next ceremony with a new perspective, and the

next ceremony would get something more, and I'd use that, and then boom.

The one night, just out of nowhere, it was all there.

As far as people who would think it's hippy-dippy, all roads lead to Rome, so

to speak. So as long as people are ready, they'll find the way.

In one's work with ayahuasca, there are two principal phases of the work.

Three, if you consider the preliminary preparation.

The second phase, of course, is the intensive phase. The intensive phase is

the ceremonial experience, the experience one has when one partakes of

ayahuasca. So the third phase of one's relationship with ayahuasca is actually

the most important phase of the three.

And that's the phase we call integration.

And integration is the processing and the realization of what one has received

in the intensive phase.

And integration is an open-ended process.

Often the benefits are not immediately evident.

And in many cases it will initiate a healing process that will unfold step by

step and eventually lead one to resolution of those physical or

psychological conditions or awaken one to certain realities that perhaps they

have not been aware of up to that point.

Pretty much all my life, as long as I could pretty much consciously remember,

I've dealt with anxiety, high, high anxiety.

And in a way, it's forced me to become someone who I'm not.

It's forced me to become emotionless, I guess you could say.

Bottled up a lot of things because it was just too hard to face. I wouldn't go

to parties and stuff like that.

It really led me to discovering more about myself.

I'd always found excuses like work. I used marijuana as a crutch.

And even in relationships, I would use that as another excuse.

I was using their happiness to really fuel mine.

And I wasn't being true to myself. I wasn't being true to them.

It's incredible what 10 days has done to that. I mean, an entire lifetime

of dealing with it. And the talking circles that we've had here have been...

a major part in that, not just the ayahuasca, not just the medicine.

This whole place has had an effect on me that I would never have imagined.

For me personally, I mean, it's helped me see my family and friends, more so

some family members who I've had a tough time appreciating.

It's really shone a light on that.

In one of my ceremonies, I saw each member of my family, all their faces.

They came to me in a vision, and it was just like, I love you so much. I have so

much appreciation for everything you've done for me, and I would never have felt

that before.

I know I've got a lot more healing to do.

I know I need to open my heart a lot more, and I'm not there yet, but I've

been shown the way, and I'm looking forward to more progress.

I'll let all this sink in.

When I go back home, I'm going to give all my family the biggest hug.

There is a serious question about the future of ayahuasca availability.

As consumption of ayahuasca increases here in the Peruvian Amazon, it's also

expanding exponentially all over the world.

And many, many, many tons of ayahuasca are exported every year from Peru, from

other South American countries, source countries.

There are a number of organizations and individuals who are actively involved in

the cultivation and propagation of ayahuasca and ayahuasca companion plants

such as chacruna, yahey, to try to offset this growing demand and

consumption.

This is extremely good.

It must be encouraged.

Certainly, anyone using ayahuasca on a regular basis should be doing something

to propagate or sustain their own consumptive needs or use of the plants.

A common reference in the context of work with ayahuasca is the purge. The

purge simply represents a cleansing or a purification process.

Purging can involve virtually any kind of clearing or elimination process

that's either physical, emotional, or energetic in nature.

The physical aspects of purging with ayahuasca usually involve vomiting,

throwing up.

But many people, in the course of an ayahuasca ceremony, engaging in a

purging process, experience that as an elimination of negativity, toxicity, and

harmful energy that is lodged in their being.

And so they have a feeling that all of that is coming up and coming out in the

course of that physical purging.

crying or some other emotional release.

Sometimes it involves defecation.

The purification process is really the essential first step in forming one's

deeper connection with ayahuasca.

A person may come to ayahuasca in a relatively impure state and have an

exciting, entertaining, or even highly visual experience that they might find

personally gratifying or rewarding in the short term but the deeper long-term

benefits require that purification process and deeper connection that

penetrates to the very core of one's soul if you will and if that penetration

occurs successfully there is usually a transformation involved which changes

the goal or motive of the person for their lives it creates a more

profound more thoughtful

objective for their life.

The Amazonian Corianderos with whom I work are Don Robert Acho.

Arama.

Don Yaliana is his wife. Don Carlos is his son. Don Carlos is the third

generation curandero in his family lineage.

I've worked with Don Rover for almost 13 years now.

And Don Rover's experience is very rich. He began his work with ayahuasca when he

was 11 years old. He was trained by his uncle and his grandfather.

And he began to conduct ceremonies on his own when he was 18 years old after

an apprenticeship of seven years, which is about average for most curanderos who

come up within the culture and undergo a shamanic apprenticeship at some point in

their lives. Not all start that early, some a little later, but the amount of

time required to attain competence, skill, and sufficient knowledge to

administer ayahuasca is six to eight years of training.

The reference to shamanism is a relatively newly introduced term that 20

or 30 years ago was rarely heard here in the Amazon.

It's been largely imported by Western influences.

People here now recognize that what they do is a form of shamanism, but in their

own minds, they generally think of it in other terms.

In the end of the year 2010, I'd like to make a yoga teacher training.

At the day when I would transfer the money to the yoga training, I went on

the internet and I found a picture from a jaguar behind the lake.

And I caught the picture and then I came to the website of Howard. And four weeks

later, I was here.

What brought me to ayahuasca was to break this cycle of insanity.

doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Working through past traumas, I needed a way to release, to cleanse myself,

cleanse my soul.

And it suffered with my relationship at the time and with connection with

people. So that's why I needed a change.

What brought me to Ayahuasca?

Really, I can't pinpoint it directly.

I was doing writing in my spare time.

A lot of things I wrote about led to consciousness and shamanism and I

decided to explore these things in research and at the time I was going

through a marriage breakup so I had a lot of time to myself to look inward and

I didn't want to be sort of that person that I was so that led me down the

rabbit hole of finding out more.

There are really two kinds of people interested in ayahuasca in the broad

category. The primary category would be genuine seekers.

The other broad category is more centered in curiosity or thrill-seeking.

Increasingly, I see more people coming to Iquitos without real intentions for

their connection with ayahuasca. What this is...

caused is a change in attitudes not only among the Western people, but also in

the local culture as well.

Fifteen years ago, the few people who came here interested in ayahuasca tended

to fit the former category of seeker, of healing or spiritual realization.

Now, people here in the Amazon are increasingly aware that many people come

for other reasons as well.

And this has changed their attitude and perspective on the nature of the Western

mentality. I think they probably respect it a little less in general. But they

also see opportunities for themselves economically and otherwise, so there's a

very mixed response.

Well, of course, ayahuasca is endemic to the Amazonian region of South America.

It has a very deep cultural history, going back most likely thousands of

years.

Western influence has a very poor track record in its discovery of indigenous

practices, particularly shamanic practices, and the subsequent

appropriation of the knowledge and the resources.

The important thing for people to bring to this work, if one comes to the Amazon

to engage the medicine and to engage the traditional practices surrounding it, is

to bring sensitivity, to bring respect.

To understand that one is not coming into this culture from a position or a

stance of superiority.

To understand that people of Western birth and heritage have as much to gain,

as much to learn from people and culture and practices in this culture as this

culture has to learn from them.

To understand that there is a reciprocity. For everything that is

received, something should be given.

to realize that they are bringing potential benefits, but they are also

bringing potentially harmful influences as well. To be aware of that, to be

sensitive to that, and to try to help preserve the foundations of this culture

and these cultural practices as purely as possible for as long as possible.

Recognizing that all forms of transcultural contact inevitably produce

change.

When I was here for my first time, I had no idea what's coming up. I had no

expectations.

I only knew that Ayahuasca is a great healer and a

great medicine.

My first experience was very special. I will never forget that day.

The medicine put me on an inner journey and he showed me the things inside. They

are not clean.

They were like rooms.

and opened the rooms and I saw a lot of trash in the rooms and over the years we

cleaned all the rooms up.

It's now my seventh time here. I drank ayahuasca nearly 60 times.

When you take a medicine it's very important to have the right set in the

right setting.

Medicines usually act local and medicine here is a local medicine from the

Amazon.

From my own experience It is very, very important to have the jungle, to have

the environment of the plants around.

Ayahuasca to be in the jungle and not in a city or in a country where there is no

rainforest. You can do that, it works, but it's not an optimum.

Howard and Don Robert offer us the opportunity to get real traditional

healing, to learn real traditional medicine.

Because here, like I experienced, you can see where is the plant from, who cut

the plant, who grow the plant, who cook the plant, how it is cooked, the whole

process. It's very transparent.

For me it's better to come here to support people, like we do when we are

here. We watch different tribes and we support them.

We create connections through heart to the people here and they see, oh, cool,

open-hearted people, also in the Western world.

For me it's better than to bring the medicine to Europe.

For me it's the biggest changes that happened is for me it's an inner

transformation. It's about how do we deal with life, how does life affect us.

different situations.

I learned to stay in the middle, to go in positions like an observer, stay calm

and discover inner peace.

In the first ceremonies, I had a lot healing about my past, my mistakes,

about forgiveness, about self-love, how to love each other.

And after that, it comes to learning.

It's about listening.

Listening to the medicine.

Listening to yourself.

It's all inside us.

Medicine helps us to reveal that.

To open yourself up because your teacher is inside of you.

This lesson I can learn every day at home.

And I can integrate that.

And when I integrate these lessons, I will come back.

But not before.

Work with the sacred plants often brings people to a point of questioning

virtually everything that they assume to be absolute or true up to that point

as an opening of the possibilities in their lives that they had not considered

before. You know, this is a path for the true truth seeker, revealing, helping us

to understand where we've been, where we're coming from in our lives and in

our... deeper spiritual journey, where we are now in the present, and perhaps

by understanding those two points, having a sense of our destiny and where

we go from here.

The medicine is good because sometimes you get lessons in ways you never

expect. Sometimes it seems too tough and too strong, but I know that medicine

only gives you what you can handle, no more, no less.

And if you think you can't handle it, it's the ego talking that wants to

protect you and not allow the medicine to work.

Last year was my first time. I came last January.

And my intention for coming was to open my heart and connect with my emotions

again.

She showed me herself in this Native American form, which is very, very

beautiful and powerful.

It brought me to this door of light, and there was this big warrior, half man,

half beast, just blocking the way.

And I didn't know at the time whether it was something I had to conquer in order

to get through to the door.

And then as the ceremonies passed, my attention stayed the same. So it was

pretty much five nights of ceremonies, all based off of one long story. And it

showed me a lot of love, a lot of passion, a lot of happiness.

So at one point, it brought me to this room.

where i was able to start seeing the intensity of my visions that are being

shed from my emotions so it would be like this silhouette and around it is

this black dark smoke just swirling around it and the emotion attached to it

you could see it was just stored up trauma and it would pull away and kind

of dissipate and every time it would be almost a slight sense of relief as it

dissipated

That happened for a while and then it put me in this position of seeing

another silhouette and just raw, decayed meat just starts disintegrating off of

it. But in this symbol, it was more powerful because it was like just this

negative energy, you know, being stored in the body and how bad it is for you.

They dove into empathy.

I've always been mentally strong and been able to conquer and do things that

I choose to do.

It's a good attribute that I have, but on the same extent, it doesn't allow me

to experience empathy towards other people when it comes to psychological

effects from their minds. So anxiety, restless leg syndrome, I always thought

were created by the mind to deflect you from something. And when people would

experience them, I would just be like, oh, it's just your mind. You know, just

tell it to go away and it will. You know, I'm able to do it, but it doesn't

mean everybody else is.

It wasn't until one ceremony where I felt extreme severe case of anxiety,

restless leg syndrome, and nausea all at the same time for a long period of time,

which pushed me to the point of giving in and not over analyzing and using my

mind the way that I always do.

As soon as I gave in and gave up to the medicine, to the lessons, to my own

emotions,

That's when I went even deeper into the medicine.

And it tied back all the way to the first ceremony where it showed me that

that beast that was blocking the door was then slayed.

Perhaps the most prevailing myth about ayahuasca is simply that all one

needs to do to become a better person is drink ayahuasca.

That is a rather gross oversimplification, which simply isn't

true.

It has been demonstrated time and again in people who lack intention or desire

to change themselves or change something about their lives.

who've taken ayahuasca and gone back into their lives and continue to do and

act and live pretty much in the same way as they did before.

And there is a corresponding assumption that anyone who works with ayahuasca as

a curandero or as a facilitator is automatically trustworthy and competent

simply because they work with ayahuasca.

Unfortunately, neither of these assumptions are true.

There are risks in working with the sacred plants.

The primary risk is in the qualities and characteristics the individual brings to

the work itself.

The other risk is in determining the intentions and authenticity and

integrity of the person with whom one will do the work, in terms of how

trustworthy they are, how much do they know, are they capable of dealing with

situations that might be potentially dangerous or risky to you.

When one works with sacred plants, one intentionally and knowingly and

willingly becomes vulnerable to influences beyond their own.

In fact, ayahuasca, as other sacred plants, induces a light state of

hypnosis. And so when one takes ayahuasca, one is entering a state of a

lowered threshold of suggestibility.

And this lowered threshold of suggestibility may be used to the

patient's benefit by a curandero,

Dubious intentions might use that same quality of the plant to take advantage

of a person in some way.

All of these things should be considered, and this is not to

overemphasize the risks or dangers, but at the same time, it's prudent not to

ignore them either.

The horror stories are the direct result of the globalization and explosion of

this whole process and the expanded involvement of people who are ill

-prepared and unqualified to be doing it.

All that said, if one undertakes this work guided by someone of experience,

integrity, knowledge, skill, and a genuine desire to be supportive and

helpful, then such people are generally trustworthy and are capable of guiding a

person through this process with great success.

The new wave of dark and foreboding tales of danger and so forth, while some

of that is true, overwhelmingly it is an exaggeration and doesn't characterize

the situation as a whole.

I think for me I've had some really good experiences with the ayahuasca.

expectations I had were pretty much blown out of the water but some that I

did have I was gonna go crazy or something because you hear all these

horror stories of just things going all wrong so it was just all in all the

whole process of the way they do things

on

the first night it was just like a

I don't know, a contents page or something like that. But without really

showing me anything, it just made me feel comfortable.

And there's some sort of feminine aspect to it.

But once you take it, it's a whole different world. It just took me down

into myself, into the dark places I have.

And I was able to just sort of like shred things apart and made me take...

layers and layers and layers of armour off. Stuff that I didn't want to be hurt

or in a sense I'd become a little bit stone cold.

Years of layers that I'd stacked upon my heart and the way that I present

feelings in certain situations was able to show it to me with more clarity so I

could see it again.

Over the last 10 days I think I've definitely opened up something and I

think it's more my true feelings and how I mask that a lot.

For me it was like I was going through a process that had almost become a wolf in

a way and I was going through it in the first person but I was also seeing it

pictorial from a third person point of view as well.

It was like I was seeing it but it was like I'd already seen it and it was just

replayed back to me in a weird sense so I'd understand from all facets.

I was able to not just see it from my side but see it from maybe someone

else's point of view.

It leaves a fingerprint of that in your memory and you can't really forget it.

In fact it grows and you start to see all these different things that help you

understand what you were, let's say, to what you could be.

The two principal areas of positive benefit one may realize through work

with ayahuasca

are in the area of holistic healing and in the area of spiritual development and

realization. Often these two processes go hand in hand.

And in the concept of holistic healing, obviously that involves healing in all

aspects of one's being. And the spiritual realization dimension is not

fully realized by everyone who works with ayahuasca, at least to the same

degree. People often...

experience a spiritual epiphany of sorts whether they were previously spiritually

inclined or not the common response is an awakening at some level of one's

spiritual consciousness if nurtured the usual result or common result is a

positive transformation which leads to better things in people's lives what led

me to ayahuasca about a year ago

was that I was sort of the guy who had it all together on the surface.

And it was slowly dawning on me that I didn't have it all together, that I was

numb and unhappy and not on the right track for my life. So I came to

Ayahuasca looking for solutions to those problems.

My experience with Ayahuasca was that it was like a defibrillator.

it was like came in and zapped me back to life um got my heart beating again it

was like i was taken in a jet airplane straight past all the the dancing mice

and the firework shows that people talk about to what i would call the great

spirit um i think religions have called it god but that's where it took me very

very quickly um no messing around and i got to experience

what it was like to have that connection.

That was a connection I couldn't have possibly imagined.

And that's, for me, what this is all about, developing a connection between

you and something bigger than you. The whole idea is that there doesn't need to

be a hierarchy.

Shamanism, in its best form, just puts you and it right there. And in its best

moments, you merge completely, and then the dichotomy of you and it is gone.

And there's just the one thing.

That's something that you can only experience.

There are no words.

After having this experience, I definitely struggled with taking that

and putting it back into my day-to-day life.

And I'd say for me, it took about a year before I'd integrated that. And I found

that that was where the real work was. And also where the real benefits came.

But that's an aspect that's sometimes overlooked.

Integrating that experience required a shift in lifestyle and a shift in the

way I was and the way I was in the world that required me to change my goals,

change my work, change a lot.

The other thing that ayahuasca has been teaching me this time around is about

choice. And everything, everything is a choice.

And we get to, every moment, we get to choose between

Really, I look at it as the light side and the dark side, or however you want

to conceptualize it. But we can make the world whatever we want it to be with

just our choice.

And ayahuasca has helped me see both sides of this thing very clearly.

And I feel like now I'm in a much more centered position to make the choices

that are going to lead us in the direction that's going to be positive

for myself and for everyone.

My only advice would be ayahuasca is not for everyone and that if you have a

calling to do it, then I suggest you pick up the phone.

Many people are seeking alternatives to the Western paradigm.

I think one of the reasons for that is simply the fact that the Western world

has been for some time dissatisfied with its own status quo and with the absence

of a meaningful base of reference other than rampant materialism.

There's still a good many people whose primary perception of ayahuasca is as a

new and novel drug experience as opposed to a holistic medicine.

Helping people to form a healthy attitude that is in line with the actual

nature of the plant, the nature of the practice, and which recognizes its

positive benefits, I think is a very important thing.

This is Juan Viza.

Juan Viza.

It was powerful of the companion plants.

But in many respects, science is kind of catching up with traditional medicine in

terms of providing the proof, if you will, based on scientific method and

evaluation to the satisfaction of the Western mind that this plant and related

plants associated with it do indeed have remarkable healing properties that...

have great potential in service to humanity and in dealing with things that

modern conventional pharmaceutical medicine does not address well, if at

all.

A very important cultural aspect of work with ayahuasca is in bonding.

This has been an integral role of ayahuasca in indigenous culture for a

long time. That is the effectiveness it has in bringing people together and

unifying people and helping people find common cause and common ground and

reducing competitiveness, increasing cooperation.

What we see in our work with ayahuasca with people coming together for the

first time, within 48 hours, no one feels like anyone else is a stranger

anymore. going through the trials and tribulations and stripping away of the

barriers to communication.

When people leave here, invariably they leave as brothers and sisters. They

leave with a sense of love and appreciation for each other.

As I tell everyone from the get-go, when you start here, everyone is an

apprentice and everyone is a maestro.

Everyone is a teacher and everyone has something to learn from everyone else.

And indeed, that's the way it unfolds.

So it's that dynamic exchange.

in the spirit of giving, in the spirit of sharing, in the spirit of compassion

and tolerance for our differences.

All of this has a very beneficial, positive influence on virtually everyone

who does this work, which ideally carries over into everyone's personal

life when they go back home.

Well, you know, I pretty much hit the ground running when I came back home

with life here.

Like I had all those incredible experiences at Spirit Quest.

You know, I saw all the things that were holding me back and some things I didn't

see before.

And I guess we continue to do that, right? When we get home, we start

reflecting back on our experiences and they keep on, at least for me, just

birthing new insights, you know, each ceremony that I kind of go back on when

I got home.

I don't know, you see deeper into the day-to-day stuff that you usually just

kind of took for granted. Even just simple stuff like work or maintaining

friendships or acquaintances just really helped me take everything to another

level. And I'm definitely happier.

You know, we have all of our stuff. We all have our issues as part of being

human. And we get reflections every day in life of the things that we struggle

with. So, yeah, I still have all that stuff.

But it doesn't penetrate as hard as it used to, you know.

ayahuasca and my time at spirit quest definitely contributed to that growth

and super grateful that i did that

Yeah, when I got back, there was a hangover for a while, you know, the

ayahuasca hangover where you're just in love with everything. And ayahuasca was

just in my head for a long time, just kind of like, I don't know, I had this

feeling she had an ulterior motive, you know, like she's trying to get me to do

things that weren't really me. And it really affected how I was when I got

back and my relationships. And it made me much more clear with what I was

willing to put up with. So there were some friendships I just let slide. You

know, I just wasn't willing to put up with that anymore.

I definitely still have a lot of work to do. My depression is still there, but

it's definitely widened down quite a bit.

I have a different relationship with it now. It's much less antagonistic, and

I'm a lot more accepting of that situation than I used to be.

Life took a very different direction than I expected, and I'm a very

different, much more confident person now. But it hasn't been easy. It hasn't

always been fun.

But I see now, I feel like...

The whole thing was leading to this point to basically get back to some sort

of ground zero where I can relax for the first time in 20 years, probably, which

wouldn't have been possible had I not, you know, gone down through.

When I arrived back home, I felt I was in a really good place mentally and I

think that made me realise that all the problems and the challenges that I faced

before didn't bear as much weight as I'd previously given them.

Integrating my experience certainly wasn't easy. I went back to the same

routine and it wasn't long before I found myself slipping back into old

habits and unhealthy mindsets.

To try and eliminate that from happening, I had to change my lifestyle.

I changed my diet. I started watching less TV and just found things that were

so much more fulfilling to me.

Two and a half years on, I still find myself sometimes falling back into those

old habits and mindsets, but I'm by far in a much better place than where I was.

For me, Ayahuasca has helped me gain so much more self-love and more confidence

within myself.

It's just helped me in so many ways.

So when I first got back from Peru, life here was challenging in the aspects of

connections with my friends and people. Life wasn't as deep as it was down

there. It was hard to find my place and it was a little challenging just trying

to figure out how to belong back into the past before going to Peru.

Since going down, when I met everybody in this documentary, I've been down

three more times and my growth has been amazing.

Life has been very happy. My perception has shifted tremendously.

And ayahuasca has helped me to let go of emotions that caused me to be depressed

on the reason why I went down there.

Things unfolded for me in a way that I didn't really know. You know, some of

the lessons I'm still learning from my first ayahuasca journey.

Every time I'm learning more and it's still integrating now.

The way that I think, the way that I am, how I hold myself.

Plant medicine.

It's challenging, but it's also an absolute blessing.

Looking back on my ayahuasca work now, I would say I was quite naive about the

integration process.

I hoped that drinking ayahuasca would solve all my problems, and I quickly

found out that was not the case. I quickly found out that it would require

work and dedication and sincerity to meet it halfway.

In doing so, I realized significant benefits in my life. I can say that

I'm... a much happier, more well-adjusted, content person for my

work. And that's substantial.

That's not going anywhere.

You know, having a few years of perspective on it, I would say that my

work with ayahuasca was, without a doubt, the biggest turning point in my

life.

This requires work, but it's work that's well worth doing.

And there's big benefits to this.

There's often no benefit to going back into ceremony too quickly, following a

good cycle of work, until a sufficient amount of integration has occurred.

And usually people know when it's time to do it again, if they feel called to

do it again, because that integrated process can actually go on for years.

I got an email from a guy in Hawaii yesterday.

He was here with me 18 years ago, telling me how much the medicine is

still working in his life and expressing his gratitude.

the treatment he received with it 18 years ago, and he's not had ayahuasca

since. That gives you an idea of the enduring benefits and qualities that one

can realize from it.