Original subtitles

Steve: Well, Tlawil, I need to talk to you about last night.

I was moving you inside for the safety of the group.

But the group is fine.

And you're a medicine person. I apologized.

That's not up for you to decide.

You're an apprentice. You're not a shaman.

That's not up to you to decide what goes on in my group.

And it's not up to you, either.

Yes, it is. It's my church. I know.

And that's why you got to leave.

Steve: I've been a lot of things in my life.

I've been a bank robber and a prisoner,

but being a shaman is my calling.

Ayahuasca is a schedule‐I narcotic,

the same as heroin and LSD,

but it's not a drug, it's medicine,

and in my church, it's a sacrament.

We can do in two days

what conventional therapy may take years to do,

but only if you are willing to step in to the pain.

♪♪

You know, I catch a lot of heat on the Internet,

especially when I first started out ‐‐

you know, "Plastic shaman, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah."

But you know what?

I forgive you because each one of my enemies made me better.

Every one of you who said I was a fake, I could kiss you.

I could hug you,

and the reason is, is I wouldn't be here

if you hadn't of pissed me the...off.

I am broken‐path shaman.

I don't have any line going back thousands of years.

The spirits decided that they wanted to work with me,

and they made an offer, and I accepted.

My mandate for Mother Aya

is to bring ayahuasca to the United States of America

and to bring her totally into modern times.

♪♪

Tlawil: I come from a very traditional background.

My dad ‐‐ he is a shaman.

He's from Colombia,

and I just want to represent my family,

the traditions I grew up in the best way I can.

This apprenticeship has been very neutral to me,

mostly because I feel like I'm already

pretty connected to the medicine world,

and I am not like Steve, and I'm not like Teri,

so I do feel like me being on this apprenticeship

is simply to fill in the gaps

that I feel like need to be filled.

♪♪

Steve: A traditionalist is gonna have a lot of rules

you're gonna have to follow.

You're gonna have to sit there and meditate.

You're gonna have to fast.

You're gonna have to do these things.

We have no dogma.

We are modern shamans, working with lights,

working with sound, working with vibration.

I'm taking your modern life into context.

I'm not just sitting there hitting you

with feathers and smoke.

I know what it is to be an American.

I know what it is to live under these pressures,

these expectations, and these demands.

That shaman in Peru or Brazil doesn't really know that.

I'm an American shaman.

I'm a modern shaman.

I'm gonna use everything that's within my grasp

to work for you.

♪♪

♪♪

Kevin: Yeah, I would have to say that the church

that I grew up in was a religious cult.

♪♪

♪♪

[ Chuckles ] Well, nervous as...

[ Laughs ]

Growing up in the church, you didn't really get to decide

who you were or form who you were

and what you wanted to be, where you wanted to go,

what path you wanted to lead in your life.

One of the difficult things about leaving the church

was losing a lot of relationships between ‐‐

whether it's friends or family,

it kind of makes you feel a little lost.

I've been married for almost 13 years.

We have four kids.

This journey ‐‐ it's about being a better person,

a better father to my children.

I feel like it's important to know who I am

and what I want to be, where I want to go,

so I can help them figure that out for themselves.

♪♪

Danielle: After I was date‐raped,

it was really hard for me

to have any form of relationship whatsoever.

♪♪

I tried to commit suicide twice.

I didn't really realize what was happening at the time.

For the first three years of dealing with it,

I just drank.

I drank almost every night.

It's really hard for me to even want to go out of the house,

and every time I go out in public,

I think about it, and I think,

you know, "What if it happens? What if it happens again?"

I hope that when I drink the ayahuasca,

I can find some self‐love.

I want to be able to love all parts of me ‐‐

the bad and the good.

Teri: The first thing that we are gonna do

is we are going to be collecting car keys and cellphones.

Thank you.

We just like making sure if somebody freaks out,

we don't want them trying to take off driving,

so that's why we take the car keys.

All right, are you all ready to go check out

where you're gonna be staying for the next couple of days?

Awesome.

Teri: We take their cellphones

because we don't want them distracted.

You're coming to work on something within you,

and nothing in a cellphone is going to help that.

Teri: If you all would like to find your beds

and go ahead and get them made,

get settled, changed into some comfy clothes.

For this ceremony, we have Kevin coming from North Carolina,

and we have Danielle coming from Ohio.

Tlawil, instead of apprenticing in the ceremony,

is going to be participating.

♪♪

‐Hello. ‐Hi.

Nice seeing our beautiful group.

Tlawil, it's awful nice... Tlawil: Hi.

...to see you on this side of the table.

Right? This is how we met.

We wanted you to be able to have your first ceremony

since you've had that wonderful little papoose.

I have become a mother,

and it's been the most amazing experience,

but being pregnant

was definitely not what I thought it was,

and I got to say, I appreciate it.

I watched Kim Kardashian through her pregnancy

'cause she at some point said, like,

"This is horrible. This is not what everybody paints it."

You know?

Like, everybody says these wonderful things.

See, I went...crazy, like, insane ‐‐

like, insane.

Those hormonal shifts ‐‐ like, one minute you're happy,

one minute you're crying,

another minute you're, like, angry as...

So in regards to ayahuasca, I have asked her,

"Okay, teach me the tools that I need to heal myself."

Steve: Tlawil has a lot of experience,

but she's among your group tonight.

She's got good energy,

and she'll help stabilize your energy.

We got a new member down here at the end of the table

named Walter filling in for Tlawil tonight.

He's apprenticing as a medicine person.

Steve: I decided to dedicate this ceremony to Tlawil

because she just had a baby.

It was my way of telling her

thank you for her service up to this point,

but it's also an observation of Tlawil

to see how she handles herself.

You know, I want to see if she's gonna

put the group's needs over her individual desires.

Tonight we're not pushing you off a cliff.

We're gonna take our time.

We're gonna slowly and incrementally allow you

to submerge into the medicine.

You'll get your first full cup,

and then it'll be about 30 minutes,

you'll get your second cup.

Then after that, we're gonna listen to you.

If you all are not really feeling it,

please, please, please, communicate with me.

Let me know what's going on with you

so that we can get you where you need to go.

♪♪

Danielle: When I drink the ayahuasca,

I'm kind of afraid that

it will change me for the worst

or that something bad will happen

or that I will have hallucinations

or relive the past trauma.

‐You have a lot of energy. ‐I do?

‐Mm‐hmm. ‐You feel that on her?

‐I can feel it. ‐Mm‐hmm.

Oh, it'll only increase as she drinks.

You'll also feel mine.

If I drink enough, I will enter your journey.

Come on.

Kevin: I feel like a ball of nerves right now ‐‐

like, stomach's in knots.

Not being in control of where ‐‐ where my mind goes,

having to face inner demons,

that's probably what I fear the most.

Steve: Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic tea

made with plants from the Amazon,

and it is the strongest psychedelic known to man,

but this isn't like LSD.

Ayahuasca is a portal to your inner self ‐‐

your subconscious ‐‐ and through that portal,

you're gonna meet a goddess we call Mother Aya.

When your journey first takes off,

you may feel euphoria until ‐‐ boom! ‐‐

the spike hits, and the purge begins.

You may laugh, you may cry,

and you may do both at the same time.

You may puke or shit, but each of those purges

are a physical manifestation of an emotional release.

That's when you truly find healing.

♪♪

Kevin: I felt it working throughout my whole body ‐‐

my chest, my throat.

It just felt like I had something inside of me

that had to come out.

I tried to hold it back and fight the nausea,

but it was coming out.

♪♪

After the first cup of aya,

well, I could start feeling it ‐‐

just kind of a warmness, a comfort.

♪♪

She showed me all kinds of shapes, designs.

You saw elephants.

There was a lot of purple.

Like, purple went from the toes all the way up to out the trunk.

[ Eagle calls ] So you saw eagles and hawks flying through the sky,

like you see a trail from a airplane.

It was rainbows, you know,

kind of coming out the feathers behind them.

I don't know what the message was behind that yet.

♪♪

After I got that feeling, it immediately went to the place

where I was being held down,

like your entire body is pressed down.

It's like I was wrapped up by what seems like a snake.

That's when she started bringing up every bad feeling

that I've ever experienced,

and one feeling would come up,

and I would just ‐‐ I would be engulfed in it.

Mother Aya had pushed me to my absolute limit,

to the point where I was ready to give up.

I couldn't do it anymore.

And then Steve appeared.

It was like he was checking in.

It's like he popped in to make sure I was okay,

to help bleed any of the negativity off of me

if I needed it,

and at that moment, she let the pressure off.

She released me.

Steve: The air is sizzling with energy.

My job as a shaman,

and my team's job as shamanistas and medicine people,

is to manage that energy.

It's no different than a bank robbery.

When you walk in and announce you're robbing the bank,

the air sizzles.

You got to know when to nudge them back into the journey,

nudge them back into that pain,

nudge them back into that emotion

that they've been avoiding their whole...life.

Now, when I entered Kevin's journey,

he was that close to losing it,

and that's why I went into his journey,

and I asked Mother Aya to give him a break,

and she did.

You're leading the group away somewhere I don't want.

This is, like, as far as I'm going.

But who's the shaman?

We are all our own shamans.

Really?

♪♪

♪♪

So what do you think of your first night of this?

Walter: I've been asked, "Is ayahuasca dangerous?"

Yes. In the wrong hands, it is,

but when you have experienced medicine people,

it's awesome to be a part of it and be able to learn from them.

They respect the medicine.

They also respect the individuals

that come and partake in the ceremony.

It's a beautiful thing to be a part of.

♪♪

Teri: How you feeling over here, sweetie?

Like, I keep hearing that I need to just, like, let go.

Mm‐hmm. But I guess I'm scared.

And that's okay.

She's not gonna give you more than you can handle.

She may test your boundaries of comfort,

but she knows what you can handle and what you can't.

You know, sometimes people who have

been through a lot of pain and a lot of trauma ‐‐

a lot of times she'll approach them very nurturingly,

very lovingly, very calmly, you know,

because she knows that you have to trust her

for her to be able to help you.

Danielle: Once the ayahuasca actually hit,

my body got really heavy,

and all of that anxiety and all of that fear

just, like, went away.

When I was 14 years old, I was friends with this guy,

and we had a lot of fun.

He was one of my best friends at the time.

I could tell him anything.

He invited me to a party one night,

and I had never been to a party before.

When I got there,

he handed me and my best friend at the time a beer,

and after that, I don't remember anything.

Everything's kind of like a blur.

♪♪

I remember feeling like I couldn't move

and feeling like I didn't know what was happening to my body,

and, um, I remember him being on top of me...

[ Voice breaking ] ...and telling me

that he wasn't raping me.

I had been taken advantage of by someone that I trusted

and someone that I didn't think would do that to me.

[ Sniffles ] Um...

It was really hard for me because I didn't know

if I could tell anyone or if I should tell anyone.

He took that trust that I had in people away from me.

I would like to, you know, be able to get close to people

and find forgiveness and find peace of mind.

♪♪

♪♪

Tlawil: My very first experience with ayahuasca

was in Puerto Rico with my dad.

He's been doing this for more than 40 years,

so him being the one

leading my very first ayahuasca ceremony was...

...without words.

My visuals were, like, cats.

They had a suit, and with very sharp teeth.

[ Yowls ]

They were telling me, "Come with us,"

and I'm like, "No."

They bothered me, just trying to scare me,

until I got rid of my fear.

Once I did that ‐‐ poof! ‐‐ all went away.

♪♪

Nik: When it comes to being an apprentice,

we have quite a few different roles.

We're the ones who put Palo Santo and sage in the air

because it's a really grounding scent for people.

There's clean‐up that has to be done

because, yes, this is a medicine that's gonna make people

puke, crap themselves.

Making sure nobody's flipping out

just because something's too much for them.

Pretty much a jack‐of‐all‐trades, really.

♪♪

♪♪

Tlawil wanted to go outside, and we're not gonna tell her no

because she's an experienced member and everything.

So I was just sitting out there,

just kind of keeping an eye on her,

making sure she didn't fall.

Tlawil: My body's still recovering,

so I need to have a lot of comfort,

otherwise I feel sore.

♪♪

Steve: Tlawil, we're gonna need to start

moving everything back inside.

Nik: She's so happy. [ Laughs ]

I know, but we're gonna have to move back inside...

...for the rest of the evening.

Tlawil: Then I'm not going, man.

[ Laughs ]

You're leading the group away somewhere I don't want.

I'm not going anywhere.

This is, like, as far as I'm going.

I will go inside when I'm ready, you know,

but I can't just feel like I'm restricted.

I understand. But who's the shaman?

And this is how we do everybody.

You teach.

We are all our own shamans.

[ Laughter ]

Really?

I'm just asking you, please, just listen to me.

Yeah, I'm good.

But I need them to go in there, too.

Can we ‐‐ well, but they can go in there. Okay?

And we're a part of the group, yes?

And the group came here.

You don't understand, Tlawil, and it's okay.

We'll talk tomorrow.

See, like, you don't want to be so stressed out like that,

when you're on a journey.

That's just so messed up.

Steve: This is their first night.

How do you know PTSD don't jump off

and one of them just take off?

And we're out here near lakes, rivers, hills, holes.

Lots of danger here, and that's another reason

we try to keep them inside, and she knows this.

She knows it at the bottom of her heart.

That's how others have died in ceremony ‐‐

not from the ayahuasca,

but from falling, hitting their head on concrete.

This is what I'm seeing.

I'm not seeing, "Oh, the plants feel good."

I'm seeing people that could fall and crack their skull.

[ Rattling ]

♪♪

♪♪

Shhhhhh.

Teri: She broke out her rattle and wanted to,

you know, sit there and shake it,

and I understand that's how she journeys.

But Tlawil also knows

that we don't do that in our ceremonies

because it is disruptive to people who come.

I wasn't real happy about it,

and it seemed like it was being done somewhat out of spite.

[ Rattling continues ]

You're not allowing me to be me.

We're done. I got a ceremony to run.

I need you to leave.

Steve: Tlawil felt she was above me.

I can't allow that kind of thinking to take off

with this powerful of a substance in her hand.

♪♪

Danielle: I had been so happy the night before

that it was kind of saddening

to wake up and, like, not feel that happiness

and not feel, like, that warm blanket.

I can't even explain how it felt to focus on myself for once

because I have never done that, and I didn't realize

that I had never done that until last night.

So I'm gonna try to continue to feel myself

and just ‐‐ just be.

♪♪

Kevin: The negative feelings ‐‐ the anxiety, depression ‐‐

they've all been coming up today, all day long.

[ Insects buzzing ]

[ Birds chirping ]

Hey.

Tabitha: I'll bet you're tired.

[ Chuckles ] Yeah. I'm sorry.

I feel like I went through every ‐‐

every bad experience I've ever had. Um...

It's just a lot to deal with,

and you don't really deal with your emotions, so...

No.

Yeah.

Just the way your family is

with kind of shutting you out,

it makes things more difficult.

Yeah.

Kevin: We grew up in a very strict church environment.

You were told what to do, when to do it.

There was no TV, no associating with outsiders.

They also believed that we were

the only ones chosen to go to Heaven,

and everyone else was going to Hell,

and that's something I really had a hard time

wrapping my mind around.

I just got to a point where I was done,

and I wanted to experience other things.

Once we quit going to the church,

it made things awkward.

I am nowhere near as close to my parents as I used to be.

♪♪

[ Laughs ] Just the thought of them.

♪♪

♪♪

Tlawil: [ Singing in native language ]

Steve: Mother Aya shined a light on Tlawil's heart,

where I was concerned.

She was being her true self on what she felt about me,

and she felt she was above me, and that's where

I can't allow that kind of thinking to take off

with this powerful of a substance in her hand.

She's an apprentice.

She's not in charge, and she needs to learn humility.

To be a good leader, you got to be a great follower.

Well, Tlawil, I need to talk to you about last night.

You and I were in some pretty strong conflict.

Were we? Yes, we were.

And I can't have that in my ceremony tonight. Okay.

And I can't have any chance of that in my ceremony tonight.

Sounds good. I am the chief shaman.

Mm‐hmm.

I respect, you know, whatever you decide.

I know that... I understand that last night

there was a lot of disrespect shown.

I'm being me, you know, and I feel like

I'm not being also respected for who I am

because you're not allowing me to be me.

No, I'm allowing you to be my apprentice.

Dude, I'm drinking ayahuasca.

So am I.

I'm ‐‐ I'm also feeling

and allowing myself to be me through the journey,

and you're restricting me from being.

And as a medicine person, you're always a medicine person,

whether you're journeying or not. Yeah, exactly.

And the group comes first. Yeah.

And I was moving you inside for the safety of the group.

But the group is fine.

And you're a medicine person. I apologized.

That's not up for you to decide.

You're an apprentice. You're not a shaman.

That's not up to you to decide what goes on in my group.

And it's not up to you, either.

Yes, it is. It's my church.

I can't be distracted in my ceremony,

otherwise, it'll get dangerous.

I never told her to go out there and make a bed outside.

What if, while I was distracted dealing with her defiance,

somebody choked on their vomit

because I'm dealing with a medicine‐person apprentice

who's trying to run the show?

Then is it gonna be, "Hee‐hee" and "Ha‐ha"?

Is saying, "I'm sorry," gonna cover it?

No, it doesn't.

And we're done. You are done?

We're done. I got a ceremony to run.

I need you to leave.

Okay, sounds good, Steve. That sucks, dude.

As a medicine person, that really sucks on your part

to take this type of approach. It's...

What would you have done ‐‐ what would your dad have done

if you had acted like that in his ceremony?

I mean, I don't do that...

But you did it to me. ...because I know...

And that's why you got to leave.

Sounds good.

Walter and Teri are gonna help you pack your stuff

and go ahead and take your stuff to your car,

and we'll go from there.

Tlawil: I'm different, you know?

Like, I'm just different. I'm a free spirit, a free soul,

and they seem to be very strict and to their ways,

and "This is how we do it, and this is how it has worked,

so we're never gonna get out of that."

And, to me, I see more opportunity

for things from my life experiences

and where I have grown.

So to me, it's very restricting,

and me working that way is not letting me be fully,

you know, my potential.

Teri: Tlawil has been with us for a while.

We have spent a lot of time

talking with her, working with her.

For her to disrespect Steve in the way that she did,

that was very disheartening.

I was absolutely disappointed.

Her disrespect was not just toward Steve and the group,

but also, you know, to the medicine,

and that's when it gets very dangerous.

I really love Tlawil. I do.

Tlawil's heart is in a good place.

It's her ego that got blown up.

It's her immaturity that got in the driver's seat.

But my priorities, first and foremost,

is the safety of the group that I'm working with,

and nothing comes before that.

♪♪

Tlawil: I would like to continue, you know,

working with people, regardless if it's here or on my own.

I'm not gonna stop. You know?

That connection with Aya is my connection with Aya,

regardless of who provides it.

♪♪

♪♪

Steve: I want you to put it in that fire,

and we're gonna give it to the universe.

Steve: With Mother Aya, there is only one answer ‐‐

total submission.

And if you don't,

you're gonna get your ass whipped.

♪♪

♪♪

Steve: The second night, when we're taking them to darker waters ‐‐

we're taking them to deeper waters, if you will ‐‐

there's only one answer ‐‐ submit, total submission.

And if you don't,

you're gonna get your ass whipped.

Thank you so much for your trust,

and I'm gonna ask you again to trust us again tonight.

We're going deeper.

Brew's stronger.

It could be coming a little bit faster at you,

and whatever comes, remember she's not gonna give you

any more than you can handle.

Now, then, Tlawil is not with us tonight

because she had some family issues come up,

and she had to go home.

So we're just rolling without her,

but her heart and her mind is with us,

I guarantee it, and her spirit.

Steve didn't tell the group

what exactly had happened with Tlawil

because that would just be dragging that energy

into the ceremony, and that's not the goal.

Kevin: Something was very different about starting the ceremony.

The whole day, I had been dealing with

emotion after emotion.

Everything I experienced from Ceremony One

just kept welling back up inside of me,

and it just felt like ‐‐ by the end of the day,

right before the ceremony started,

it felt like everything was just clawing to get out.

Steve: Kevin is here because he lost his identity

because he was in a cult with his family.

But when he broke out of that,

he was an empty shell of himself,

and to leave that behind had to be psychologically torturous

to come to terms with.

They were gonna keep him safe and secure

and walled off from all the evils of the world.

It sounds like prison, don't it?

People who gather with you around a fire

are normally friends and family and community,

and so it allows us to open up.

So I love having the chats by the fire.

I love burning things into the fire

because it symbolizes letting things go,

turning it unto the universe, giving it to God.

Whatever verbiage you want to put on it,

it's about letting it go.

Tell me about the church that you were involved in.

It was a large congregation.

There was quite a few people.

You know, we weren't allowed to associate

with people outside of the church.

You didn't date outside the church.

Your friends were inside the church.

It was a closed community. Society.

How's your life been since you quit?

Um, there's been a lot of strain on family... Right.

...'cause both of our families still attend.

A lot of the friends that we used to associate with ‐‐

you know, friends growing up ‐‐

they're extremely distant now.

Sounds like your whole world that you had to shift...

Pretty much. ...when you left it.

Yeah.

We'd probably call the church that you described as it was,

when you were a child, as a cult.

Mm‐hmm.

But, to you, it was a church.

It was your community.

So, if you wouldn't mind, just take this right here,

and then I'd like you ‐‐ like I just did it ‐‐

what you didn't like and what you liked

'cause nothing's all bad.

♪♪

Take your time. We're in no hurry.

Steve: I knew it was gonna be easy for him

to write what he didn't like,

but I wanted him to think what he liked about it

because that's what we had to grieve.

That's what was really symbolic about letting this go.

See, it's easy to let go of shit you don't like.

It's hard to let go of stuff that you love.

I think that'll cover it.

Okay. Good deal. Good deal.

I want you to put it in that fire,

and we're gonna give it to the universe.

We're gonna let these things go

through this ayahuasca ceremony,

and you're gonna give it over to Mother Aya,

and you're gonna be amazed

at what she can pull together in situations like this.

And so whenever you're ready,

just please put it into the fire.

♪♪

Kevin: I wrote "loss of control," "loss of freedom"

on the negatives.

On the positives, it was "friends, family, community."

Placing the piece of paper on the fire

and watching it burn was part of the weight

being lifted off of my shoulders.

I felt the ayahuasca going through my body.

It felt like there was a filter, and my whole body

was being sifted from head to toe.

And it was just catching all the negativity,

all the bad energy, and pulling it out.

♪♪

It's not always beautiful and pretty.

Sometimes it gets to be some ugly shit.

Anybody who has ever been treated in that manner

carries some sense of guilt,

and I'm just curious ‐‐

have you forgiven yourself for it?

♪♪

♪♪

[ Retching ]

The purge felt beautiful.

There's no other way to describe it.

I don't like throwing up, but that wasn't throwing up.

That was totally different.

It's her way of pulling all of the bad out of you.

It turned all of my anxiety, all of my anger,

all of my fear into a physical form.

Instead of just feeling it exiting your body,

you can see it come out.

♪♪

Steve: With Danielle, I chose to use the tent

to create a symbolic womb, a symbolic safe space.

I wanted to take her all the way back to the beginning,

when she was with her mother's heartbeat,

and move forward from there.

I chose a blue light for Danielle

in the tent tonight for one reason.

She's a victim of sexual assault,

and blue subconsciously represents to us

protection and security.

She needs to be able to be secure in her own decisions,

and that's what I want to anchor home with that blue light,

is the security that she feels within that womb of that tent.

I understand you had a friend who violated your trust,

and I assume you gave him a lot of trust.

I could tell him anything, and he wouldn't judge me,

and we could talk about anything.

You gave him so much trust

that right now, you question yourself,

when you did absolutely nothing wrong

but trust a friend

who did not give you

the proper respect you deserved.

For whatever reason, he chose to do that.

But that was not your fault at all.

And can I ask you this?

Are you ever at a place that you can truly forgive him

and let it go?

I think that I've forgiven him.

I think that I have kind of excused it almost, so...

Where are you at in forgiving yourself

for these things happening?

Because I don't care how much you tell yourself,

"It's not my fault. It's not my fault,"

Anybody who has ever been treated in that manner

carries some sense of guilt.

And I'm just curious ‐‐

have you forgiven yourself for it?

I don't think so.

You don't have to just forgive them.

You have to forgive you, and you have to accept

that it was something that happened

that was beyond your control, and you have to say,

"You know what? I'm sick of this event ruining my life."

Tell me his name.

♪♪

Kenneth. Kenneth.

Danielle: I had never actually, like, said his name out loud,

and no one had ever asked me that,

so I was really caught off guard by it,

and I didn't really know how to answer or what to do.

But saying his name actually gave it less power,

and that was incredible.

I didn't realize that part of all the burden

I was carrying and part of all the pain

wasn't me, like, not forgiving him.

It was me not forgiving myself.

Teri: People don't understand it's not always gonna be,

you know, these big, fluffy, cotton‐candy clouds

and unicorns and fairies.

It's not always beautiful and pretty.

Sometimes it gets to be some ugly shit,

but, you know, it's 'cause we've got some ugly shit in us

that needs to be dealt with and gotten out.

[ Cries ]

♪♪

Once Mother Aya took hold of me,

it was this big, like, complete release.

It went from a sad cry to a healing cry and to ‐‐

I wanted to get that out.

I needed to just be able to, like, release

all of the anger and resentment

that I had towards myself and toward the situation.

I feel alive now, and I feel like

I actually have a life worth living

whereas before, I didn't really feel that way.

[ Sighs ]

♪♪

I closed my eyes. I saw ‐‐

at first, it was, like, a yellow blanket,

and it was, like, in waves.

Like, it would move in waves,

and for each wave, you saw a different pattern.

So there were, like, red lines and green lines

and red triangles and green triangles,

and it, like, blanketed the whole universe.

It was Mother Aya, and she was this spindle shape,

and she had all of these threads

that went to everything in the universe

and touched everything in the universe.

I realized that she was in everything,

and it was just so calming and so surreal.

♪♪

♪♪

After, like, being in the tent,

I did find, like,

that unconditional love

and that feeling of unconditional love,

and I was the happiest I had ever been

and, you know, when I interacted with her,

it was like she wouldn't let me face anything bad

because she wanted me to feel, like, all the good things.

Sounds like you're starting your garden of contentment.

Yeah.

And that's a place that only you reside,

and that's a place you go to make all your decisions

in your life ‐‐ that garden of contentment.

You see, I learned in prison in the hard way

that I can be content in an unhappy situation. Right.

Happiness comes and goes,

and you learn to just flow with the hills and valleys,

no different than your journey.

You are a strong woman.

You're a goddess.

Thank you.

You know, the one thing I really wanted for you

was even though, you know, like,

all these things have happened,

and you felt like you had been broken,

what I wanted most for you was to realize you hadn't been.

And it sounds like you got that. Yeah.

And I think that is just absolutely amazing.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you so much.

Danielle: When I first got here,

I feel like my self‐worth was really low.

But after I drank the ayahuasca, I feel like I can do anything

and I don't need anyone else's approval

or anyone else's validation.

I was living in a constant state of fear,

and I was always having anxiety and looking over my shoulder.

I feel like I have a different vibe about me now,

and I feel like I can do more things and get out of the house,

and I don't have to be this hermit.

Now I feel like I'm free,

and I feel like I can just be happy,

and I can just be me.

Steve: Come on up. Come on up.

Y'all have been a pleasure to work with,

and we look forward to interacting with you

more in the future.

Coming to Aya Quest, I was feeling the anger.

I was feeling the depression, the anxiety.

It was trying to take control of me.

And leaving Aya Quest, after the ceremonies,

I'm able to let go of those things.

We can't change what's happened.

We can only change what happens in the future.

‐Come here, you. ‐Thank you.

Ah. Take care of yourself, you hear?

I will.

Ayahuasca is there to help you when you need it,

but it's not there to control you.

She is unconditional love and unconditional care.

Mother Aya really is everything.

♪♪

Kevin: Ayahuasca is a mother.

She's there for you.

She will be there

and help you through all of your baggage,

all of your emotions, but you have to seek her out.

She's not gonna force you to take the journey.

♪♪

Right now, we have to nurture ayahuasca in America.

I know some of you look at me and go,

"What the... is the world coming to,

when a convicted felon, a bank robber,

can set in front of me and go,

'Dude, do this hallucinogen with me'?

How in the hell did this happen amid a war on drugs?"

Well, I'll tell you how it happened.

It was the power of a lot of people

who looked a lot of time behind bars dead in the eye

and said, "...you."

Violence ain't the answer.

Revolution ain't the answer.

Evolution is, and Mother Aya is leading that charge,

and she is here in America.

The jaguar is here.

To be honest with you,

I consider this right here to be the Amazon of America,

right here in the state of Kentucky, in this forest.

I feel like I'm the father of the forest,

in the Amazon of America.

That's exactly how I feel

every time I walk through the woods

of this dark and bloody ground.

♪♪

♪♪

Kevin: I got a lot of benefits coming out of it.

It was a life‐changing, or mind‐changing, experience.

♪♪

♪♪

I'm completely off my medication for depression and anxiety.

I definitely feel like

I love myself so much more.

♪♪