My Ayahuasca Experience

I’ve sat with the medicine 16 times in the last two months and this is my attempt to “summarize” the experience and how it affected me.

Having been traveling for a while now and not updating that much I’ve begun getting a lot of questions on WhatsApp, especially around my experience with Ayahuasca. In the beginning I just answered that I needed some time to reflect on it and the words would come, and in the last few days I’ve started asking myself that same question. Not that I haven’t been reflecting but I have been so much in the details of it’ I had not had time to reflect on the total experience and I felt the need to summarize it too my self. And I figured why not do both at the same time. So here is my story around sitting with the medicine, 14 days after the last ceremony (meaning this will probably develop with time).

I want to start by saying that while many believe that all ayahuasca experiences are similar, I argue that they are not. It’s a deeply personal experience, meaning that if you choose to do it, you should not expect to experience any of the things that I’ve experienced. Another thing is that as psychedelics are becoming increasingly popular both for recreational reasons as well as healing, my firm belief is that ayahuasca should be used as a medicine and not for recreational reasons.

Why am I saying this? I’ve learned that most people who sit with the medicine attend a 3- or 5-ceremony retreat. For me it wasn’t until around my 5th event I started to understand what had happened in the first 3, because the experience was so overwhelming and there was so many messages that I didn’t have the capacity to understand it. With that said though I did have an experience in the very first ceremony, many don’t as they have blocks around surrendering, which means that it might take even longer to have an experience.

I did a 8 ceremony retreat with Caya Shobo who have come to realize that it’s important to the medicine time - for different reasons. And in my second ceremony I got a strong message to plan for yet another retreat, which I listened to, so in total I’ve done 16 ceremonies. Meaning I’ve sat with the medicine a lot in comparison with many who’ve experienced it. With that said, I’m a complete rookie. An experienced maestro (which you will want to sit with) have more than 30+ year of experience and sometimes they sit with the medicine daily for months and the facilitators where I was at also have years of experience with the medicine. So if you are considering it for yourself, I’ve got a lot of people to point you too :D

With that said I’m going to divide my experience not by ceremony but by body, because for me this is that makes ayahuasca so different and why I will definitely return to the medicine in the future. Even though I cannot think about the taste now without shivering. Haha.

Another thing I want to note here is as I’m a rookie I might have a hard time distinguish between what is what. When working with Ayahuasca according to the shipibo tradition, there is a lot more than ayahuasca going on. I did a 6 week master plant dieta, I spend 8 weeks eating according to the ayahuasca diet and we were offered flower baths and another medicines such as rapotee. As well as receiving Icaros from the maestros during every ceremony. Thus my healing comes from a combination of these healing practices and at least for the moment I cannot comprehend exactly what is what.

So my reflections on my experience is on the combination, and someone with more experience can probably decipher this more. But as I’m writing mostly for people with less experience, this is Ayahuasca for me:

Physical

For me, more than the other’s I participants, the experience was very physical to me. That’s why I’m starting with this. The medicine worked a lot on my physical body and my understanding of the body. To give you a few examples, I’m very very flexible now after spending hours of stretching both in and out of ceremony which I never did naturally previously but that just happened and I could not stop. So don’t be surprised if I can do a split when I come back to Sweden ;)

I also had a lot of visions explaining what Gabor Maté is speaking about in When the body says no and The myth of Normal, the examples was not the same as from the book. But I was shown how our behaviors manifest as physical illnesses in our body.

To give you an example of this, that many of you won‘t believe, but I’ll put it out there anyway. Up until the my early teenage years I was very artistically creative. I loved to be on stage, sing, dance, play theatre etc. Then around the time I was 14 a lot happened, the girl next door who was my best friend growing up died, my mums mom died and my dad got cancer. This was a lot to handle as a 14 year old, and given that both mum and dad were in crises in their own experiences, I didn’t really know what to do. And as a 14 year old you’re not really in the time period of sharing anything with your parents, let a lone any emotions. Thus, I shut down completely.

Having that much happen to me that was emotionally challenging, as up until that point my childhood have been very protected. I’m still digging into this time period, but what I can see is that after that period a new version of Annelie emerged, more scared, more of a fighter, a definitely with a goal to never be that hurt again, building up many walls and much protection. Now I want to be clear, I was entrepreneurial before as well, and I’m can still be onstage when needed. But my path definitely changed direction. I went from a carefree creator to a rigid developer.

At the same time I get my scoliosis diagnosis. My spine literally changed direction. Now this may be coincidence and no one can ever prove the connection. But if you read any of the books by Gabor Mate you might as I do start considering that there is a connection. And this was only one of the many, many examples I got to see in my self and in my family around this theme of physical illness manifesting in our body. Thus my understanding of the mind, spirit and body is completely different now - an understanding that I don’t know how to use yet, but as I want to build a health house in the future, I can see why this knowledge came to me.

Looking at what this means to me personally I can see that I need to to allow my creative spirit to reappear and allow myself to not be afraid of being that person again. To know that I’m ok.

Emotional

As you understand from my story about my teenage years you understand that I’ve been very shut down emotionally. My way of being has been - ignoring all bad feelings and trying to keep up a good spirit. But to be honest not really opening up to be vulnerable and feel love, because I’ve was so hurt. This changed a bit when I meet my x and during our time together, but after my mum got sick a 2,5 years ago I shut down more than ever. I had so much fear eating me up that eventually it turned into a depression.

Last year, I had some really great things happening to me. For example; I was doing I bucket list trip to the Caribbean on a catamaran and was offered a board position I could only dreamt about, but I could not feel any joy at all.

I think that for me was the wake up call. I knew that I’ve always had a hard time reaching my darker feelings, but realizing I was not in contact with happiness I knew I was in trouble. I needed to do something about how I was feeling or this depression was going to eat me up.

I had already begun some practices work on how I was feeling, I was regularly meeting with a hypnotherapist and a life coach and I had my introduction to both KAP and psychedelics. But it was a slow process (patience is another lesson I’m learning now) but it was around then the call for ayahuasca came.

Now, both KAP and Ayahuasca (and a lot of the books I’ve read lately) have made me realize two things on this theme. The first is that to feel the light, you need to feel the dark. And to let go of fear you have to choose love.

So the first point, to feel the light (Happiness, excitement, joy etc) you need to feel the dark (anger, anxiety, sadness) I think this has been a missing part of our society or at least my life. Everytime I or someone close to me have been sad there has been an urge from that person and those around, to remove that feeling and replace it with the positive. We have this idea that we should always be happy and that all other feelings are to be avoided. We optimize for light and think we can only have that, but last year has taught me that we need both. All our negative / dark feelings are here to teach us something (so are the light) but if we don’t take the time to sit with them, to listen to them, we will either shut down this part of our being (like I did) or they will get louder to make us hear the lesson. I’m still struggling with this, but I’m working on it. I’m currently going through some of the things I fear the most, and sitting with the dark feelings around them is a big part of my healing.

The other point - choose love over fear. In the last ceremony during my first retreat I started of with 20-30 min in absolute fear. I just wanted to get out of my skin. Until I remembered the main facilitator‘s words “Do you choose Love or Fear?”. Then I thought that all this fear is here to help me and there is something bigger, something loving that is trying to help me by showing me this. Choosing to believe that I was loved and this experience was good for me, it all went away. That experience was short, but it was life changing. If we can believe that everything that happens “to us” is actually happening “for us”, even the bad stuff (Not talking wars etc) such as getting laid of from work, separated from our loved one or a sprained ankle - if we can choose to believe that it’s for a loving cause in the end, a lot of suffering would go away. Working on this one as well - but that hour is ceremony surely gave me a jump start.

Spiritual

The word spiritual I’m still struggling with, what does it even mean? (and yes I have googled). So I’m going to use the word soul and here I’m going to connect a bit to a book I’ve read along with the experiences with the medicine.

The book is called “The Celestine Prophecy” and I read it between the two retreats. Fittingly enough it plays out in Peru :D Anyway, one of the messages in the book is that when our soul comes in to this life it choses its parents based on what it is supposed to learn in this life. Your “mission” of this lifetime is a combination of your parent’s mission.

I had never thought about it this way, but analyzing this a bit gives you some very interesting suggestions. I’m not going to give my souls purpose to you in this post because I think I’m not there yet, but if you want to explore this on your own I’ll give you a few hints.

Look at what your parents are each passionate about and then look at their parents. Can you see how they are either following one or both of their parents missions. What I found is that it’s likely that they (and you) are more similar to one parent, the parent they are closer to.

Now to be clear, mission does not have to be what they are working with. Look at who they are, what makes them stand out, look at how you describe them focusing on their good qualities. If you know it, look at how they were when they were younger, that may give you some hints as well. Look at the different parts; their personalities, their interest, their values etc. When you’ve analyzed your parents, then look at your self in relationship with your parents (you can also try this with your kids and you).

I found that I had some patterns more in-common with mum and some more in-common with dad. I could also see the patterns my mum and dad had developed from their parents.

What I also realized is that the gaps (for example something that is a strong pattern with my dad and I’m lacking) is also where I feel that I have some development to do. To come closer to my mission in this lifetime, but that is something for another post.

Another interesting thing I re-learned side is that everything in life is a mirror. And I mean everything, but it’s the things that stand out that you should take a look at. So what I try to do now is that when I wake up in the morning I look at the day before - what stood out and what can I learn from that. Then I consider how I can act on those ideas going forward.

Mental

A few days into the first retreat I concluded that a lot of what was going on in and around the ceremonies was my other bodies coming to life. That’s why I left the mental part to the end of this post. I described myself like I had been a floating head and I was finally connecting to the rest of me.

About a year ago I was talking to my coach about me wanting to connect more to my feminine side. At that time, for me this meant “removing” some of my masculinity to make room for my feminine. He then said, “why don’t you become more of both”? So drawing from that experience - realizing I’ve been heavily in contact with my mental body I’m not looking to limit that, but instead grow that, while growing the other bodies more.

So taking this approach I’ve realized that my mind is like an AI ;) It only get as good as the data I put in there, so to optimize my mind I have to consider my diet and I’ve got to value all input. This means of course reconnecting to my body, because I do believe that all organs have a brain and a language. Ex. Your bladder will tell you when it needs to pee and you will feel thirsty when you need to drink.

But also all external data is input, what you read, who you hang out with, what you eat, how you think about your self etc. Basically your life is the input data or your diet. So to utilize my mental capacity the best I need to consider my diet.

And this is very difficult, especially in my normal life as I live in the city and have a calendar that gives me little flexibility.

Which is why I decided to extend my trip and spend more time on my own in nature. Learning to know myself better before I start “dieting” the rest of the world as well :P

I just came back from a three day hike in Cocora valley and Los Nevados and in about a week I’m heading to Patagonia to hang out with those mountains for a few weeks.

Summary

It’s difficult to summarize the experience, but with this I guess the Ayahuasca experience affected me on so many levels. It’s made me reconsider what I know about my self and the world. I reconnected me to so many memories and events. It allowed me to heal from experiences that was traumatic for me even though I didn’t know it at the time and it showed me a lot of patterns that I’ve acquired for reasons that are not always valid.

I wrote an entire moleskin notebook during my two retreats, so it’s a lot that I’ve not covered in this post. I do think you see that it affected me on multiple levels and it gave me new perspectives on a lot of stuff. Some you might be able to believe in and some you may not - and that’s ok. I will share more going forward, but once again it’s a deeply personal experience so just see this as examples.

And hey, if you managed to read until here - I guess most wont - share a like and or comment so it probably will be less than a month to the next post.

Love,

Annelie