Original subtitles

>> Look at all the people.

[music playing]

>> [non-english speech]

>> Part of me thought that I'ddo it and everything will be

magically fixed for me.

>> It's really hard to definehow these experiences impact

your life because they do in so many ways.

>> There was a before, and therewas an after and a very clear

line.

And a line was ayahuasca.

[non-english singing]

>> [non-english speech]

>> It's interesting because in medical school,

we're not taught about energies or about spirits.

So doctors can't fix what they can't see.

So it's almost like there's a different lens

that the shaman is bringing in, one that we're not necessarily

seeing.

>> Science is very good, but is very limited.

So the implications of this is there

are many other ways to know.

There are other forms of knowing that are not scientific.

Yet they are valid.

>> [non-english speech]

>> I have sat with probably about 65 shamans or so, maybe

a few more, but I've never experienced the craft

at the level of talent that I've experienced with the really

good Shipibo shamans.

>> [non-english speech]

>> The Shipibo, they are already connected.

They have been raised in the knowledge

of the spiritual world.

This is a reality for them.

They know that they can learn from plant.

So they're going to go directly on this level of how to learn

and how to heal.

>> [non-english speech]

>> These teaching plants are the channels from which Gaia

or the spirit of nature conveys what you need to know,

and somehow or other, these plants, particularly ayahuasca,

has an uncanny sense of exactly what it is you need to be--

what needs to be revealed to you.

>> When I turned 40, I hita place in my life that I

immediately defined as a midlife crisis.

And so for my birthday, I decided

to give myself a special gift.

And a good friend of mine was mentioning

magic mushrooms in Mexico and Oaxaca with a shaman.

I was like, wow, how cool is that.

When I decided to go to Oaxaca to do the magic mushrooms,

I mentioned this to my mom, and she did not like this idea.

>> [non-english speech]

>> She thought it was the worst idea.

She actually said to me, aye, mijo, why don't you

just go to a beach and get drunk all day and chase women.

And I'm like no, no.

That's actually-- I'm trying to get away from that.

I can't say that that particular ceremony shifted much

in my life.

But one thing that where I am now seems just magical to me

is that the next day after doing this ceremony with the shaman

in Oaxaca, he said now that you've met the children,

you've got to meet the mother.

And I'm like who is the mother, and he said ayahuasca.

I'm like I don't know--

I don't know what that is.

And he said don't worry.

When the time is right, she will call you.

Nine, 10 months later, I felt the call.

>> I was in my 20s whenI first met the medicine.

I was-- I just graduated college.

I was a student athlete at USC, and I

was a professional swimmer.

I was PAC 10 champion, national champion.

I was coming from a few years of successful--

of being a successful sports man.

And so I had this thing with success

that was a bit in conflict with another side of me,

which was the artistic side of me that had been cultivated

also since I was a little kid.

And so I went to the medicine a little bit looking

for clarity, struggling a little bit with direction

because a part of me, the competitive part of me

wanted a career, wanted to make money.

But there was also the other side of me

that was the creative one, the kid in me that just enjoyed

painting and being creative.

And so I went to the medicine looking for clarity and help.

>> I had a friend and she told me about ayahuasca and she was

actually going to Peru.

She also told me that it produces hallucinations,

and part of it is vomitingand having diarrhea.

And I didn't think much of it aside from a little bit

of judgment like why do it.

After she came back, I remember we took a walk through Central

Park, and as she was telling me what she had experienced,

I wasn't so much interested in the context of the experience.

But there was energy around her that--

sense of purpose and joy and just overall content that

was so new, and I thought to myself maybe

that's the thing I've been looking for.

>> I got an email with all ofthe preparation that one has

to undertake-- no red meat, no oils, no--

it's very limited.

I followed the diet very, very closely.

Some things I couldn't really explain, but I was like, well,

let me just go with it.

But the one I found interesting was that no masturbation

and no sex.

And I was like, OK, purity.

I see the whole purity thing.

I can go with that.

>> [non-english speech]

>> So there is a practicein the Shipibo lineage when

you're coming to drink ayahuascathat takes place now as taking

a vomitivo in advance of drinking ayahuasca.

>> And this is one spoon of and we'll just the second one now.

>> OK.

No.

>> Only one?

>> Sorry, we don't know.

It's still gonna work right?

>> Yeah, it's going to work.

It does normally.

So just your tummy's gonna be a bit sensitive.

But then you would just add one.

>> Just add one.

>> All right.

>> I was a little shocked to hear that one of the first

things that they give you is this thing called the vomitivo,

and it's this milky white substance that they make from

two plants called azucena and oje.

And it's-- you just chug it, and you drink it as fast as you

can.

And what happens is once you get it all down,

it will come right back up.

[retching]

>> Vomitivo is taken in part because people may not have

dieted, and maybe they have things in their system that

they shouldn't coming to ayahuasca.

So it's a safeguard.

It's a safety measure.

But also it's a purging of this stringy, mucus-y, sticky stuff

that we have in us.

So when we clean, we have a clear container

to receive the ayahuasca.

We have a clear container to receive the master

plant that we're dieting with.

>> [non-english speech]

>> [non-english speech]

>> The idea is to remove anyinterferences that are around

us so that we can connectdeeper to the master plants.

>> Certain plants they do refer to as master plants,

those plants that are whether they're trees,

whether they're flowers, or whatever-- they're vines--

they regard certain ones of these plants

as the big plants that deliver a particularly powerful healing

force and assistance once you have

a good relationship with them.

[music playing]

>> I was seeking help in terms of connecting on a deeper way

with my artistic side in order to be able to bring forth

a project or a body of work that was going to be meaningful not

just for myself but for the community.

They still have prescribed me a diet with pina colada, which

is this little plant that grows everywhere in the village.

And she told me to pick the leaves of this plant

and in the meantime to talk to the plant

to ask for assistance, to ask what I was looking for.

Because one thing is ayahuasca and the visionary psychotropic

world of ayahuasca but to do it during the day,

to talk to a plant that you're picking its leaves

was a different kind of suggestion.

But I did it.

>> For me as a doctor, I would say, yeah,

that sounds pretty strange.

I didn't believe that or understand that.

But then in doing that, I learned a lot.

I went through the experience.

I decided to enter this mystical school

and try to see what I can learn based on what I had seen

these shamans and these healers doing, how they

were performing, and the kind of results they had with people.

>> First of all, passing that block of how do I talk

to a plant, for me, it was that.

A plant's teaching me?

I'm used to opening a book.

>> [non-english speech]

>> The first night that I was doing the diet,

I woke up from a dream, and in this dream there was this giant

red snake coming down from the sky, the same color--

the red-- the same red as the pina colada.

This snake was coming down from the sky singing a song,

and I woke up.

It wasn't intimidating.

I wasn't afraid of the snake.

It was a friendly presence, but he was such a peculiar dream,

that I woke up.

So in the morning, Estella, the first

question that she asked me is how did I-- how I slept.

How did I sleep?

And I told her that I slept good,

but I did wake up through this dream.

And she told me that this is how plants very often show up

to establish the connection with the people,

the diet, this plant.

>> The plants are always connected to us.

I believe that it is more about our awareness

of that connection, and what helps

to bring that awareness online is when the food is removed.

The social activities are removed either completely

or significantly where you retrieve from your life

and make the relationship with the plant

your primary relationship.

>> And what happened a month later is that I had filled up

a notebook this big of ideas for art projects, for scripts,

for all sorts of different projects that were inspired

by the dreams that I would have throughout the night,

and I would wake up in the middle of the night and take

notes.

These people, the Shipibos are pharmacists of the jungle.

They have so much knowledge and not only

about the plant to give you if you cut yourself.

They have a plant for your depression.

They have a plant they can diet for your creativity,

for your reproductive system.

[non-english singing]

>> [non-english speech]

>> When you invite plant energy, they teach you attitudes,

and they give you intelligence.

You understand.

You understand.

And there is concept, spiritual concept.

Then your visions open bigger when

you know what is the meaning this type of healing including

the spiritual part.

Open you up to something new.

So you start to facilitate.

Then you do one diet and another diet.

And then your knowledge, understanding open up.

And then you get to the point to become Onaya, which is means

literally the person who knows.

>> [non-english speech]

>> I kept working with the medicine for a year after I

went to Peru.

Second time, a year later, I went back

to the same center, and again my last ceremony there,

I had this vision with the medicine.

And it felt like-- so much like a yes, like absolutely yes.

There is like an invitation of some sort.

>> [non-english speech]

>> [non-english speech]

>> [non-english speech]

>> Ayahuasca is the only combinatory psychedelic

in the world.

That is it takes two plants it.

Takes the vine, and it takes a leaf to make.

>> Ayahuasca vine and typically chacaruna,

and that is the monoamine oxidase inhibitor and then N,N

DMT --

dimethyltryptamine.

Dimethyltryptamine has also been shown

to increase BDNF brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is

like Miracle Gro for the brain.

And so that will also allow for increased

neurosynaptic connections and neurogenesis.

>> Ayahuasca is a plant that contains many mysteries

including what is its mechanism of action both biologically

and psychologically.

>> Now we have this portal that through our hearts and through

our-- in our emotional being, we can feel into this energetic,

into the mystery.

People have mystical experiences.

They feel it.

They feel it in their body.

>> It is something that will utterly change your entire way

of thinking about healing, what's possible for the body

and mind, and it has the real potential to shake up medicine

like no other agent on Earth.

>> The first time that I heard about ayahuasca was when I was

in my early 20s.

This was in the early 1970s, and we started hearing reports

from Brazil about this strange drug

from the Amazon, which was having very interesting effects

in the culture.

So a bunch of the psychologists went down there

and started doing studies, and they came back

blowing everybody's minds because they were showing

that this was perhaps the healthiest psychological

cultures that they had ever come across.

>> In 1993, along with my colleagues Dennis McKenna

and Jace Callaway, we went to Manaus in the Brazilian Amazon

and conducted a fairly substantial phase 1 biomedical

psychiatric evaluation of the health of long-term members

of the UDV who utilize ayahuasca in religious ceremony.

Twice monthly, we had a match control group

that was matched on socioeconomic lines, education,

all parameters except for the fact

that they had never been exposed to ayahuasca.

>> Their first ayahuasca sessions were usually quite

terrifying and quite unsettling, but they were also revelatory

in the sense that they became quite afraid but then there was

a redemptive moment.

There was a period during these difficult early experiences

where they saw a way to change their life

and have a better outcome.

>> When we did structured psychiatric diagnostic

interviews, we found that quite a number of these ayahuasca

church members had had histories of some significant

psychopathology prior to the time they entered the ayahuasca

church.

After their entry into the church,

they actually rather radically transformed.

>> On the biochemical side, we were doing various

measurements.

We found a surprising thing, which

is that the levels of the serotonin transporters,

not receptors but the transporters,

were significantly elevated in the drinkers

compared to in the age matched control of nondrinkers,

and we thought, well, that's interesting.

There is a clear difference between the drinkers

and the non-drinkers.

They have these elevated levels of the transporter.

What does this mean?

We didn't know what it meant, but then, of course,

when you don't know, first thing you do is go to the literature.

And we went to the literature, and we found a whole spectrum

of publications having to do with deficits

in the transporter being associated with alcoholism

and homicidal tendencies, of suicidal tendencies,

depression, exactly the kind of thing

that the UDV people were facing.

>> [non-english speech]

>> Everything changed.

I felt so much love for not only myself as a sentient being

but for all other beings.

The awareness of my own body and my own body's needs

was so much more clear.

I seem to be--

to have more regulated sleep cycles.

I got up early.

I had much more energy.

I couldn't hold a grudge.

I got mad.

Stuff would happen.

But I couldn't let go of this because somehow I

understood that if I started giving

in to the grudge and the anger and things

like that this open connection that I had to the heart

would just close.

But I lived that way for an extended period of time,

and drinking and smoking was part of that.

These things just fell away.

It was beautiful, and everybody around me saw it.

My sister, Vivian, decided to go to Peru,

and she's had her own experiences with ayahuasca.

And my good friend Geoffrey, who's

been my friend of 30 years, one day

he said, brother, I think I want to go meet the mother.

>> I really am aware of my own depression in the last couple

of years of my mother's being sick and passing.

I even went on medication for a little bit

that had me walking around like a zombie.

But to see these people that have actually

come back from this experience, and it's in their eyes.

It's in the way they carry themselves.

It's in their attitude about life now.

It's really something to see, and I want some of that, baby.

Give me some of that juice.

>> For some things, Western medicine is not good at.

So there's things we're great at,

and then there's things that we're not very good at.

And in particular, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, depression,

anxiety, PTSD, there are not a lot of good treatments for it.

>> These problems are quite often rooted in some kind

of emotional disturbance.

And when somebody has been through some serious emotional

trauma, they do end up having physical symptoms

and associated problems.

And when they go through a spiritual healing

and you see a resolution of physical symptoms,

well, now we can say that something happened.

>> I grew up with a tremendous level of abuse.

It was emotional abuse, the physical abuse,

and sexual abuse.

These experiences were something that were just

like blocking me from the world, and I couldn't you

could physically feel that.

>> A lot of the therapeutic potential of these psychedelics

is you hear a lot of talk these days about the default mode

network, and that's a model.

Your brain synthesizes and takes all the sensory data

that we're getting through eyes, ears,

all our sensory channels takes that, integrates it internally

with many other things--

memories, associations, and creates this model world

that we inhabit.

Psychedelics temporarily disrupt that.

They blow it apart.

That gives you the chance to look at yourself

from a different perspective, almost as though you're not

the same person and you can--

their identify may be habits or presumptions or various things

that are contributing to this destructive, non-helpful

behavior.

>> I'd heard it was kind of like miracle drug,

like that it could heal any sort of mental problem you might

have.

So I had some problems with anxiety,

and I kind of have an addictive personality.

So I thought maybe it would cure me.

>> Most of the people that doesn't really want to go

in the spiritual world.

They're not enough, very enough many stories

that it's fine for us just to get the healing.

You have to be brave to drink ayahuasca.

>> There are individuals who just do not have the--

that inner strength and fortitude

to be able to handle this experience.

>> Not everybody is suitable for psychedelics in general,

no matter whether it's mushrooms, peyote, San Pedro,

LSD, or ayahuasca.

Fragile people, people who are manic,

people who are schizophrenic, people

who have profound mental and emotional problems

should not be drinking this stuff.

>> [non-english speech]

>> It's good to have two options.

You don't to.

We have good experiences here with people

who had a master plan dietand never drink ayahuasca

and felt great, and they had awesome dreams.

And so they're both options.

Then everything I said is true.

If you are also looking into your own darkness,

it can be very scary.

And not everybody is ready for that that way.

>> Never in my life would I have ever thought that my mother

would drink ayahuasca.

But one day, I was on the phone with her,

and I was planning a trip to Costa Rica

to drink some ayahuasca.

And she said to me I wish you'd invite me.

I'm like what are you saying, mom.

Are you saying that you want to drink the medicine?

And she says yeah.

And all I could think of was why.

And she said because I've seen what it's

done for you and your sister.

>> [non-english speech]

[drumming]

>> The tradition is very important,

and the intention behind this plant.

And I think about it hadto be grown and harvested

and brewed and prayed over andtransported and then delivered,

and the intention every stepof the way really matters.

And that intention matches the intention that whoever's taking

it is bringing to it.

>> I find a very, very important component of doing work with

ayahuasca is formulating an intention,

to really focus it ahead of time why are you doing this.

Because for it to have any lasting value,

it's got to be more than just kicks.

It's got to be more than a recreational experience.

And it really-- the experience in and of itself

goes to the core of that individual.

[non-english singing]

>> Very commonly experienced by the people that come here,

they realize oh my God, I thought it was going to be

about the ayahuasca.

I thought it was going to be about this.

It's about the songs.

>> I had a terrible, terrible experience.

I thought I was dying.

I thought I was dead.

And one of the helpers came up to me.

I asked for help, and she said I will take it to the shaman

and they will help you.

And to myself to be honest, I thought what a bunch of BS

like who's going to help me now.

And I don't-- can't even explain to you what's happening to me.

By the time she broughtme in front of the shaman,

I couldn't even sit up.

I just collapsed on thecushion that she put me on.

And as he started singing, there was

something so incomprehensible happening,

like I was understanding what the song was

about beyond the words.

It was doing something that I couldn't even imagine possible.

And by the time he was done singing to me, I got my bucket,

and I was able to walk back to my mat in complete peace.

[non-english singing]

>> When I was working with the Shipibo,

they said really clearly thateven though we recognize that

ayahuasca is the real curandero,or the medicine, the healer,

it's icaros that tell itwhat to do and where to go.

>> [non-english speech]

>> For Shipibo shamans saying that in a dieta,

the icaro out of the plant.

The plant talked to me and taught me the icaro.

Someone else may say being on ayahuasca,

I was inspired to feel and hear this melody,

compose this melody.

I think they're one and the same,

and it's very, very complex.

But there are different narratives

and different ways of talking about what's going on.

It's far more complex than we can conceive

that it can accommodate aninfinite in different ways

of talking about the processes.

>> Where we're receiving from is a mystery,

but I've definitely had the experience of something just

feeling like it's coming through another dimension or some

people say being channeled.

>> The medicine brings us a lot of different metaphors.

So if they saw a bear in somebody,

they would see their anger or a lion in someone,

they would see their anger.

So if they're working on a big dragon,

they wouldn't necessarily sing really strong to that dragon.

They would go really quietly and move into that energy

almost to trick it to get in there to do the cleaning.

>> One time I--

where I was just beginning into shamanism, I looked over

and I saw a shaman singing to somebody.

And I saw this energy vortex come out of there

with the song, the icaro.

It was this tunnel of energy that had this vibration moving

through it.

And then it came to the person's body.

And in that moment, when they merged and were interacting,

it opened a little window.

I could see over the shaman's shoulder.

I saw a little like a television.

I could see inside the person's body

like the way you can with the surgery,

open and look and look around.

[non-english singing]

>> The song is affecting us on the emotional level.

It's impacting the autonomic nervous system

helping it shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic.

It's allowing us to establish contemplative, meditative,

transcendental, mindful state, requires the mind.

>> [non-english speech]

>> Experience with ayahuasca with the icaros is

a correction, is a realization to how we got lost

in the misguided perception into going into the inception of how

this sense of loss was caused by a traumatic experience,

by conditioning or PTSD, and the correction comes from within.

[non-english singing]

>> My duty as a professional athlete was to win the races.

I was very unconsciously attached to success.

If I didn't win, that was a failure.

[non-english speech]

[non-english singing]

There was this ceremony which the magazine showed me

a particular episode of when I was a junior swimmer.

And I went to the European junior championships

and I took prelims as a joke and I ended up

missing the final for one cent of a second.

I went to this championship so ready to win,

so I can't tell you how disappointed I was.

You know, I felt like I let down my world at the moment.

The ayahuasca showed me how I was still carrying the sadness

at being the disappointment in my father's eyes, in my coach,

in all the people that were there had an impact on me.

At that particular moment in my life,

that had so much hype and expectations

and me not being able to live up to those expectations, that

influenced me later on also.

That shock was preventing me also

from being more daring in life, for example,

because of my fear of failing.

>> I was born with a condition called congenital amputation.

And there was not a lot of education

around that, so I've experienced a lot of shame

and a lot of a treatment like I was not

human enough or capable enough.

And unfortunately a tremendous part of that thinking

came actually from my family, from people who raised me.

And so my coping mechanism was built

around the identity of provingpeople wrong about myself.

I realized that no matter what I could achieve, no matter

how well-educated I was or informed,

the feeling was still there.

And the realization that even though I spent so much

time and energy proving other people wrong,

deep inside I took on those beliefs.

And I knowingly lived my life out of that place.

[non-english singing]

>> In one ceremony, I found myself sitting with five other

guys, and they were all me.

And they were all parts of me that I either ignored

or rejected or suppressed.

And it was a very difficult thing

to do to be sitting with apart of me that is vengeful,

the part of me that's lustful, the part of me that is envious,

the part of me that is destructive,

the part of me that wants to steal.

I couldn't even look at these guy--

I couldn't look.

I could just sit there, and I knew that I couldn't leave.

But it was my choice.

I stayed.

And it was incredibly difficult to even look at these guys

because they were all me, and they were all pretty awful.

>> I started the bawl.

All I could hear was my sorrow.

I realized during the song that my anger was my weakness.

It was like kryptonite.

It stole my power.

It took away from me everything that was strong.

>> [non-english speech]

>> That happened to me a couple of times when I got scared

about the power of this medicine.

And then it just brings me down very quickly, and I feel bad.

I feel nauseous.

>> As soon as I drink it, I felt hot,

and then pretty soon after, I puked it up.

So I haven't gotten the full effect.

[non-english singing]

>> There was the spirit of the medicine caressing me,

telling me there wasn't a big deal to lose a race.

You know what I mean?

That kind of consoling, loving energy,

I didn't experience that time.

And so the healing arrived in which

she helped me understand thatthen my sense of worthiness

had nothing to do with winninga race or winning anything

or losing anything.

It's something that goes beyond.

But also at the same time in that release,

I felt like space was created, and that gave birth basically

to a feeling that was a lot more fearless.

So I defined the massive plants opened the gate for me

to reclaim my creative love, creative force.

>> The unfolding of that journey was actually getting in touch

with vulnerability and receiving something rather than giving

something and receiving something when I didn't have

that wall because I was so deep in my fact and I did not have

the coping mechanism that I could grab on to to go back

to my original safe zone.

And that was one of the very challenging and very healing

things that happened during the ceremony.

>> I started to feel more OK with these other people.

It felt a little somehow safer.

After some time, the most magical thing happened.

They were all little boys, and they were me.

And for the first time, I felt love and compassion

for those parts of me that I had just rejected for so long.

And to just be able to embracethem as little children,

I cannot describe to you whatthe wholeness that has resulted

from being able to choose to do that.

If I cannot love and accept my own dark parts,

I will never be able to accept the dark parts of another,

which means I cannot love them because love is exactly that.

>> [non-english speech]

[vocalizing]

[non-english singing]

>> They can be very difficult sometimes.

That's part of it.

I can say I witnessed that many, many, many times when people

are very terrified and frightened and stuck

or they're in pain or all the different things that

can happen.

And then through support in the ceremony

by advanced practitioners, more often than not,

we could get people to progress and evolve past

where they were stuck at.

>> I felt [exhaling] the sense that God was watching me--

[sniffling]

And loved me no matter what, that I should love myself

first.

>> Well, my experience has mainly been puking,

puking a lot.

>> Ayahuasca shatters our defenses.

It's like the only choice is surrender,

and it's in that moment that all the things we've

been holding on to, all the things that we've been taught,

and all the ways in which we have been instructed--

you have to be this way-- fall away, oh my God.

Because in surrender is when the liberation comes.

>> It creates an opportunity to renegotiate the experience

so as to be able to gain something different from it.

The experience itself doesn't change,

but my relation to the experience changes.

>> I was preparing to thinkthat dangerous highway,

and I was getting--

I was ready.

My body was ready to manifestto suffer from that fear

that I had about the highway.

And so I'm a holding onto my wheel,

and I realize that I'm not afraid.

>> There is a potential of very powerful healing that happens,

and there's many, many stories of that.

But we cannot downplay the reality that in most cases,

the integration process is extremely crucial

to the success of the healing.

>> You can drink ayahuasca 100 times and still be in the same

place.

>> I got homework from the mother.

She told me in a ceremony that I had

to do a celibacy diet in order to get

to where I needed to get to.

That's the long story.

We won't get into that.

But that's what I needed to do.

And she said a year.

And that night I was like a year.

No.

This is crazy, a year.

How about six months?

And then she said nine.

I was like OK.

So we settled on nine.

>> You blow apart this default mode network.

You disrupt these bad behavioral patterns.

But the default mode network is very resistant.

So if you blow it apart, but it will fall back together.

It will collapse back together.

>> The experience of that celibacy dieta was to integrate

all of those parts of myself that have been exposed and had

risen to the surface through ceremonies.

>> Emotional intelligence and understanding our emotions

and navigating our emotions, that's not the realm

of the mind.

And so the common thread that I see is disengaging from what we

know and willing to step into something that cannot be

explained but can only be experienced.

>> I spent a lot of time alone.

But for the first time, it wasn't intolerable

and even enjoyable at times.

>> The healing I believe is in bringing the heart into a state

and vibrancy and taking off the flakes of everyday life that

puts limitations on how deep one can feel love or forgiveness

or gratitude.

>> Ultimately, it's only about that that we have all of that

life quality.

>> The measure is not how much you can drink and how often

and who you saw and what you experienced.

The measure is how healthy are you.

How healthy are your relationships,

your intimate relationships, your family relationships,

your friends, your community, your society, your ecosystem?

That is the measure of health.

[music playing]

>> My relationship with success if before success for me was

to meet the expectations of people and my own expectation,

now success has nothing to do with the thrill of a victory.

We are helping the community.

Family is healthy.

Your body's healthy.

Your relationships are healthy.

That's where my happiness is.

Just like ayahuasca uses a symbolic language,

which is the visionary world of your psych

to convey certain messages to you

and use a symbolic language which usually is inspired

by the natural world, to convey a vision

and messages that perhaps can facilitate

an inner dialogue in the viewer that may help arise

a personal revelation about interconnectedness,

about being one with nature, about the nature

of consciousness, about what it means to be human.

>> [non-english speech]

>> In terms of the difference that it can make

in the culture, when you look at the corruption,

the banking schemes, all the propaganda in education,

the fake media, and the toxic food and the toxic

pharmaceuticals, it's everywhere you look.

It just isn't human beings being true to life.

>> The Shipibo started to see the world was--

it really in need of healing.

And their local villages.

They're not really moving around globally,

but the information they were getting within their ceremonies

was that the Westerners are going to come.

Start sharing the medicine so they can bring it forth.

>> Ayahuasca is a powerful tool for assisting the individual

in actually finding that inner truth and then living that

truth.

And as each of us do that as individuals,

it builds a culture where not only can we support each other,

but it becomes harder and harder for those

who aren't being true to themselves to actually get away

with it.

>> I know for a fact couple of years ago I would not be--

I would not be able to sit in front of a camera

without a prosthetic arm.

Today, I feel so much more free.

And it doesn't mean that I still don't

get the looks or awkward questions,

but I feel like if I can do it and I can be the stand, then

I hope that it serves other people as an encouragement

in believing in themselves.

>> [non-english speech]

>> [non-english speech]

>> These Indigenous people are the bearers of the great

mysteries of the past, and I think we need to respect that

there may be something to their medical models that we can

learn from.

>> Ayahuasca, it's been used by shamans for thousands of years.

So they have their own paradigm, and their own model about it.

>> A spiritual practice of ayahuasca ceremony,

it is a form of spiritual healing.

And in that sense, it is a form of spiritual practice.

>> I like working with people because I love being

the witness of the transformation,

and there's no greater reward than seeing somebody coming

back to themselves.

>> If my first time to Peru was a vision at the top

of the mountain, the second time in Peru,

she knocked me off the mountain all the way down.

It's been very difficult at times,

but the difference is I'm back at the top of the mountain

but with the experience of climbing it.

>> Ayahuasca is making her way around the world,

making her way to people so this is happening.

>> I think the spreading of ayahuasca in the world has

to do with a shifting consciousness that is happening

all throughout.

I am very hopeful, and I believe that ayahuasca and these master

plants, they're going to assist us in the shift.

>> In one ceremony, the mother showed me the Earth.

And then from a little spot in Peru,

a tiny little light emanated and then started

shooting up towards North America and then

another and then another, and it started covering the world.

But then from those other places,

lights started emanating.

And before you knew it, there was this Earth

that was covered in a completely beautiful grid of light.

And as I'm seeing this beautiful thing,

she whispers to me this is how I'm going to change the world.

[drumming]