Not *another* Ayahuasca trip report...

Does trekking to the jungle to 'find yourself' really work?

Grab yourself a cup of tea/coffee/hot drink of choice and settle in - this is going to be a little longer than usual! 

You may have seen at the end of September that I took myself off to Costa Rica to experience an Ayahuasca retreat at the beautiful Reunion Experience in Costa Rica. Given the nature of my work in supporting others through their own deep healing, I want to share with you a little more about why I decided to do this, what the process was like and what I took away from the experience itself - and why this was one of the most challenging things I've ever experienced.

I want to start off by being very clear on one thing - this is not an advert or promotion for plant medicine or Ayahuasca. While I believe that plant medicine can play a powerful role in personal healing and transformation, this is not a decision that should be taken lightly and it is not for me to say whether this is the right path for you. If you are curious, then I would recommend spending time researching and feeling into where this curiosity stems from and ensure you feel grounded in your decision, from a place of being well informed. The purpose of this email, is to give a real and honest account of what this experience was like for me. 

So now that important disclaimer is out of the way, what led me to step into this experience? I have been on this path of self-inquiry and healing for coming up to 8 years and I have explored many different modalities of healing. Having been relatively cautious and anti-drug in my teens and early 20s, around 4 years ago I found myself increasingly curious about psychedelics and plant medicine. Initially this likely came from a familiar place of looking for a quick fix to all my problems (spoiler: there's no such thing) - and I began to explore recreational and ceremonial experiences with psilocybin (mushrooms), which has led to some incredibly powerful healing and consciousness-expanding experiences.

Why Psychedelics (or plant medicine)? 

• My personal experience of and opinion on the role of altered states of conscious in the healing process comes from their capacity to give us access, explore and integrate aspects of the psyche and the self that cannot be accessed in normal waking state consciousness. They act as an 'opener' - lifting the veil on those deeper parts of ourselves that we may be blocked from and in connecting to these elements of ourselves, we have the opportunity, when held in the right way, to integrate and move ourselves towards a greater sense of wholeness. They also have a powerful ability to connect us deeply to ourselves and to our innate spirituality. To quote Bertrand Russell, they provide us with 'knowledge by acquaintance' rather than 'knowledge by description' - for example, in one experience of Consciousness Connected Breathing I experienced an embodied sense of joy that had previously eluded me. This felt sense experience is significantly more potent than someone simply describing to me this feeling of joy.

Why Ayahuasca?

• Joyfully known as the 'little death', Ayahuasca is the indigenous plant medicine of central and south American cultures across the Amazon basin. Often viewed as one of the most intense and transformative of the plant medicines out there, Ayahuasca is not for the faint of heart. In indigenous cultures using Ayahuasca, it is very much viewed as medicine, used to treat physical and psychological ailments. In these modern times, the same is still true, with people seeking spiritual healing and growth, support with addictions, mental and emotional health and much more. 

Why Now and Why Me?

• The last 6 months, whilst full of a lot of good, have also been challenging for me personally. I had found myself feeling stuck and a little lost. For as long as I can remember, I have grappled with feeling like an outsider and the loneliness that has come with that and this was rearing its head in my life in a particularly strong way, lacking inspiration, joy and playfulness, ultimately feeling pretty disconnected from myself. It's easy, when you're in a position of serving and supporting others to (wrongly) feel as though you need to show up as infallible all of the time and I have certainly found it hard to accept my own vulnerabilities in amongst this journey and as a result, I'd likely pushed down and denied myself some very valid struggles and emotions with it. Another part of this is linked to identity, and how we can attach quite strongly onto certain aspects of our identity, that whilst real and authentic, don't capture the whole picture of who we are. For a while now, it's felt safe and cozy to unconsciously hide a little behind 'breathwork Jamie' and the science/knowledge base behind the practice itself, but again, through this pattern I was denying myself my wholeness. 
  
  They say with Ayahuasca that you will hear the call if and when it is time to do it, and that was certainly the case for me. An invitation down to Costa Rica arrived at just the time I felt I need something new, something different, to lift me out of the funk I had found myself in. I went into the process with intentions centred around confidence, clarity and self-acceptance, and I wasn't disappointed.

The Process

• While many Ayahuasca retreat experiences are incredibly rustic and stripped back, there is a new realm of retreat centres emerging, such as Reunion, that blend the authenticity of traditional indigenous ceremonies with a more modern setting. This was a big plus from my side, as having an on-site medical clinic, comfortable and cosy rooms to retreat back to and incredibly well-prepared and nutritious food really elevated this experience. Over the course of 8 days, we were scheduled to have 4 sittings with the medicine. Alongside this, we had orientation and discussions sessions, regular breathwork, meditation & movement sessions, alongside plenty of downtime to integrate, relax and take time offline. 
  
  The ceremonies themselves took place in a stunning and beautifully crafted temple, and followed a precise and intentional structure. We began with guided meditation, cleansing with Copal and Mapacho, before being invited up individually by the shaman to consume the thick, brown, bitter Ayahauasca brew, before heading back to our mattress and personal space to lay back and prepare for take-off and the next 4-6 hours of the experience. Alongside the classically psychedelic visual elements, Ayahuasca is infamous for its purgative effects - typically, vomiting and diarrhoea, but also yawning, crying, shaking and much more. The question I was asked more than any other on my return was 'did you puke or sh*t yourself??' - classy.
  
  The experience differs for everyone. For me, the first ceremony was gentle and familiar, there was no traditional 'purging' and the visuals were re-assuringly similar to those I have experienced in other psychedelic experiences. I remember coming back to my room feeling equal parts relieved that I hadn't had my head blown off, and equal parts underwhelmed. The second ceremony, however, was where things got interesting, very interesting. I found myself in the midst of what can only be described as some of the most intense anxiety I have ever felt. The guidance with the medicine is that if something is coming up, then it is leaving and you 'simply' need to relax into the experience and allow the medicine to do its work - and it was up to me to trust in this. This anxiety stayed with me for the next 24-36 hours after the ceremony itself and this became a real battle of will for me. As we approached the third ceremony, I had a strong gut feel that I didn't want or need to push myself any further than I already had, and that I should not do the final two ceremonies. After battling my own demons and the voices telling me I was chickening out or avoid the deep work (maybe, who knows!), I sat with the team and I confirmed this decision with them.
  
  What happened next was fascinating and liberating, over the following 3 days at the retreat, I experienced a level of self-acceptance and self-love that I had never felt before, the anxiety subsided entirely to the point it had become a distant memory and I felt lightly and incredibly empowered to step forward and integrate the lessons I'd found through the 2 ceremonies. As someone who has always had self doubt close to the surface, it seemed as though trusting myself to make the call to not do the final ceremonies was powerful medicine in of itself.

Takeaways

•  So what? Where have I landed, now three weeks back from this experience. Honestly, I feel different, for the better. Not drastically and dramatically, but subtly and powerfully. I feel lighter, less in my head, more present, more joyful and more connected to myself and others than ever before. 
  
  I wrote a list of 18 key takeaways on the flight home, but there is one that seems to bind them all together, along with all my intentions, which is around the topic of self acceptance. For as long as I can remember, I have labelled myself a lone wolf and an outsider, and that I am broken, which is a self fulfilling prophecy. I learnt through this experience that the extent to which you feel like an outsider is directly proportional to the extent to which you don't fully accept yourself. In connecting to a new found sense of self acceptance, my self doubt has softened (not died completely) and I am able to be more gentle with myself, which I didn't realise how much I needed.

That was a long one, but believe me when I say that it could've been four times as long. I hope this gives you a flavour and a taste of why I decided to undertake this experience and what happened for me as result. If it has tickled your curiosity, then great, if it's turned you off entirely, then that's great too. The single piece of advice I want to leave you with is that this is no light fluffy experience, and that it is entirely unique to the individual so I simply cannot say whether I would recommend it to you or anyone else, that is entirely up to you. 

But, if there's a couple of things you should do, is cut yourself some slack, go gently with yourself and most of all, remember that you're not broken.

J x