Ayahuasca Retreat Preparation, Participation, and Integration

Posted by: Carlos Tanner

Are you considering an ayahuasca retreat?

Perhaps you’ve already booked your retreat and are looking for ways to optimize your experience. Maybe you’ve attended a retreat and are hoping to find ways to maintain and continue the healing you experienced. Whatever the reason you have for reading this article, I hope that reading it provides insights you can use to achieve the highest benefit in your endeavors to be healthy and happy. Of course, your own intuition and inner guidance should always be given attention and importance, so if you recognize that some of these ideas resonate with you, follow those, and if some don’t resonate with how you feel, act accordingly.

To me, the healing process, like all our experiences in life, can be categorized in a similar way to how we categorize time: the past, the present, and the future. In relation to a life experience like attending an ayahuasca retreat, this could better be described as Before, During, and After. Let’s take a look at each part to see what we can do to contribute positively to the entirety and outcome of the experience. To do that, I’d like to first present my perspective on personal perception, identity, and reality.

THE STORY

We are each the author of a story. In each of our stories, we are also the main character. This story is our true understanding of how we have interpreted everything we have experienced. We perceive and describe ourselves according to this story, sometimes telling portions of the story as an explanation. An example of this might sound like ‘I grew up in a household that never had pets because my father thought they weren’t clean. Cleanliness is very important to me. So, I don’t own a pet now, either.’ Our past experiences have shaped the way we are now.

Our interpretations of past experiences have also become references for how we respond to our current experiences. An example of this might be that if I think dogs are dangerous because I was bitten by one in the past, I’ll be fearful of a dog approaching me because I’ll be referencing my past interpretation. It may be important to note that sometimes an experience is indirect, like seeing, reading, or hearing about someone else’s experience. How another person describes their experience influences how we remember a reference. In these cases, someone else’s story can become a part of our own.

I feel that going on an ayahuasca retreat is the making of a story. Really, it’s just a chapter in a much bigger story, but, upon return, it is very likely that the story of participating in the retreat will be told numerous times. To tell a good story, the main character needs to first be developed so that it is understood who this person is. To do this involves answering questions like the following:

– What kind of person am I who has chosen to do this ayahuasca retreat?

– What are the issues I hope to resolve?

– Why do I struggle with these issues? What has caused them?

– How do I view myself, my life, and the world?

– What changes to my beliefs and perceptions do I wish to make?

 

PREPARATION

I think it is fair to say that people typically choose to participate in an ayahuasca retreat because they want to resolve certain issues in their lives. The term ‘healing’ refers to the resolution of these issues, or the transformation from being ill to being well. This is what the story is about, the plot. So, one way to look at retreat preparation is as a process of character development that sets up the plot of the story, which in this case is the transformation that will occur as a result of participating in the ayahuasca retreat.

Of course, because we are both the author and the main character of our story, the process of character development is an inner exploration to understand our true selves as best as we can. When we improve our understanding of how we came to struggle with the issues we wish to resolve, we improve our ability to participate in their resolution. The more we know ourselves and how we came to be who we are, the more we empower our ability to transform ourselves and who we will be.

Here are a few tips to optimize this process of preparation:

REFRAMING THE TIMELINE

While the retreat has a start date and an end date, I think it is a good idea to create an additional start date for the preparation phase of the retreat. I recommend selecting a date that feels right for the preparation to ‘officially’ begin and marking it on your calendar. This reframing can serve as a stronger motivation to do your best in the days or weeks leading up to a retreat. For example, if the retreat begins on the 20^th, perhaps you’ll mark on your calendar that ‘Retreat Preparation’ begins on the 6^th. Then, you can start getting ready for that new date.

To get ready for the Preparation phase of the retreat, you’ll want to be sure you have removed unhealthy temptations from your home like alcohol or drugs, junk foods, etc. and have brought into your home healthy options for your consumption. This can be organic fruits and vegetables and other high quality foods, but can also be beneficial books, art supplies, or other daily practice materials like a yoga mat or meditation cushion. Getting a journal is also an important item to have when the date arrives for the retreat preparation to begin.

JOURNALING

Writing your story is both metaphorical and literal, and journaling is a great way to collect thoughts and insights in your effort to better know yourself. It helps you to gather memories that might not be readily accessible and then to recognize patterns when you look back over your entries. Expressing insights becomes a process of creating dots that outline who you are, which you can then connect to get a better picture of this person you are now writing about, your current self. This is the main character of your story of transformation.

I recommend getting a journal exclusively for the retreat, and one that you really like. The more you view your journal as a special item, the more likely you are to pick it up, write in it, think about it, and put quality energy into the entries you put in it. I also think having a dedicated writing implement, which you should also consider special, improves the quality of your expression by enhancing the energy you feel about writing in your journal. The first page of this journal will then be an entry you write on the first day of your newly reframed calendar date for ‘Retreat Preparation’.

In addition to getting your retreat journal and writing implement, you may want to create a daily schedule for writing in your journal, although I think it’s also a good idea to have your journal with you throughout the day. To facilitate this process of insight expression and recording, it is also advisable to incorporate a daily practice of some sort. By practicing an inward focused discipline each day, you can then follow it with a journaling session to get the most out of the effort.

DAILY PRACTICE

The most well-known daily practice for inner awareness is probably meditation, which is incredibly beneficial, but you should always choose the path that resonates most with you. Other daily practices are yoga, qi gong, tai chi, singing, dancing, drawing, going for a walk, unplugged silence, or anything you find helps you focus on yourself, quieting the chatter of the mind, getting away from the distractions of one’s outer environment, and connecting more deeply with your own inner environment.

If you already have a daily practice, then you can use the start date of your retreat preparation to motivate you to be more disciplined and take the practice deeper, as well as shifting the focus more towards the specific roots of the issues you would like to address. Just like with the journaling, I think it’s a good idea to create a daily schedule for your daily practice. An example of this might be to meditate for ten to fifteen minutes (or more) each morning before breakfast, followed by five to ten minutes of journaling.

Often, the combination of inward focus and insight recording creates a positive influence on our behavior during this time. We might find that we automatically choose healthier options for eating, listening, watching, and engaging our time and attention. When we recognize how we can influence ourselves to behave in a healthier manner, we can then move forward in that process by adding other activities that feel right to us. One activity that I feel is nearly universally beneficial is to spend more time outdoors.

QUALITY TIME IN NATURE

Spending time among plants and trees, listening to the sounds, breathing the airs, feeling the breezes, helps us feel alive, for nature is the source of all life. A forest is always in a state of maintenance, striving towards balance and wholeness, constantly adapting. It is always healing, and when we spend quality time in a forest, we feel that energy, that divine healing principle that can be observed in all living beings. We are a part of nature as well, and inside each of us is that same energy to heal. Being in nature amplifies our inner healing energy.

Of course, our attention greatly determines how we are influenced by our environment. To maximize the positive influence of time spent in nature, it is important to give it our best attention. We should do our best to truly look at the leaves, the grass, and the clouds, to truly listen to the breeze, the birds, and the insects. I find that imagining myself as a child again helps me to remember the magic and mystery that is in every flower, every ant, and the majesty of every tree. When I smile at nature’s beauty, that smile is for me, as well.

If you can plan just one trip out into the woods, away from the sights of buildings and roads and the sounds of machines, perhaps on a weekend, it can have a very positive influence on your preparation. And if you can plan for shorter trips to parks, or out in your yard, even if you are not immersed in nature, with your attention properly focused, it will still have a positive influence on your preparation.

This effort to spend time in nature can also be combined with your daily practice and journaling. If you plan to go hiking in the woods, you can seek out a place during your hike that feels like the right spot to meditate or do yoga or whatever your practice might be, which can then be followed by writing in your journal, sitting on a rock, leaning against a tree, next to a stream, or in a field. These activities will positively contribute to your preparation and readiness for the next phase of the transformation process.

INTENTION

When the time comes for your retreat to begin, you will most likely have some other aspect of preparation to consider, like packing your luggage, organizing your travel documents, and making sure you have everything you need for your trip. It’s important at this point to complete your retreat preparation.  This is done by reading your journal entries and making one last preparation entry. You can figure out when the right time is to do this: the night before your flight, on the plane, or when you arrive. I think the plane ride is a perfect time and place for it, as there is not much to do anyway.

When you read the insights you’ve recorded, try to go deeper into each one, reliving the memories or looking more closely at the effect they had on you. Most likely your understanding of the first journal entry will have evolved through the process of writing and reading your earlier entries will deepen your understanding of the more recent ones. As you read the entirety of your preparation journal entries, look for themes, patterns, and connections that may tie the insights together. Do you better understand the root causes of the issues you wish to resolve? Do you see your story forming? Do you know what most needs your attention?

Summarize all the journal entries into one final preparation entry. Write a short story of who you are and how you came to struggle with the problems you are now ready to solve. This is the part of your story that sets up the transformation. It defines what parts of you will be transformed. And this story will express your true intentions for doing the retreat. Immediately, the work you’ve done in the days leading up to the retreat will provide benefit to you. This benefit will most likely be apparent to you before the retreat begins, but it will be obvious in the next phase of your healing process.

 

PARTICIPATION

Just getting there is an achievement worth celebrating. It takes a lot of planning. It takes preparation. It takes commitment. Just showing up is an important demonstration of your determination. Most of the work leading up to the retreat you do on your own, with your own energy, your own desire. But once you arrive to the retreat center, you will be taken care of by a group of people devoted to assisting you, guiding you, and supporting you. There is still a great deal of work ahead, but you will be in the ideal environment for a true transformation. Of course, transformation requires participation.

Just as your preparation will serve as your road map for the work to be done on the retreat, there are two powerful phrases that can fuel your healing process. While the optimal results will come from truly embodying the meaning of these phrases, we can only do the best we can. Doing our best is always more than enough. So, even if we aren’t totally feeling what these phrases express, we can still put forth our best effort to make them as true for us as possible, to strive to make them true.

“WHATEVER IT TAKES”

This is the ultimate expression of participation. When we are ready to do whatever it takes to accomplish our goals, we will meet our challenges head on, we will face our fears, we will dig deep to find whatever we can to keep going. Sometimes, healing processes are difficult and require courage. Often there are elements of the process that are unpleasant and uncomfortable. When we are ready to do whatever it takes, we have filled our tanks with high octane fuel. I have observed over a thousand retreat participants, and it is obvious that when this phrase is spoken, the person speaking it experiences a better outcome from their treatment.

“TRUST THE PROCESS”

So much of our healing is guided by a deep trust or faith. To get on a plane and fly to the Amazon rainforest, to get on a boat and head into the jungle, to drink a foul-tasting medicine with a group of strangers in the dark, could be described as a leap of faith. Trust has gotten you there, and trust is needed to get you through. These two phrases express your commitment and determination to accomplish your goals, to heal and transform yourself and your life. Chances are that it will not be easy, but it will certainly be worth the effort.

THE PLOT OF THE STORY UNFOLDS

While your journaling during the preparation was more about collecting data to give context to the healing transformation, to establish the ‘before’, your journaling during the retreat will be much more about describing the process. Keeping a similar schedule of journaling is a good idea, only instead of memories from your past, now the entries will be about the most recent events, like what happened in the last ceremony, or during the last treatment, or in your last conversation, etc. Writing about new realizations and new feelings is tremendously important. By recording these new experiences you are much more likely to remember more details as you relive them while writing. You will also be making sure that you won’t forget your thoughts, feelings, and healing revelations when you go home.

If it’s possible to continue to incorporate the daily practice from your preparation along with the journaling, that will also enhance how well you record and remember this new chapter of your story. This may very well be the most meaningful chapter of your life, and you can encourage that perception with focused intention and determined behavior. You can choose to give more powerful meaning to the telling of your retreat experience and the result will be that you forever remember it to be tremendously powerful.

CLEANSING TO HEAL

The healing process is not linear. It does not start with you being ill and then getting a little better and a little better and little better and so on until you’re well. I’d say it much more resembles cleaning your kitchen. When you clean your kitchen, you first decide where to start – perhaps it’s the refrigerator. You open it up and start taking everything out, easy enough in the beginning when its items you just put in there, but not so easy when you get to the back where the spoiled stuff that you’d been avoiding has been rotting and silently infecting the rest of your food. When you go to move that stuff, it just oozes, and a stench enters your nose and causes you to gag. Maybe you shut the door for a minute and even consider leaving it for later, but you know it will only get nastier, so you go back in and hold your breath and get that gross stuff out of there. Eventually, you get everything out of the fridge and now it’s all over the place in your kitchen. You’ve essentially made an even bigger mess. If you stepped back at this point and looked at your kitchen you might think you’ve made it worse.

But you press on. You get your sponge and start scrubbing away the grime and cleaning each shelf and the walls and the door, and you finally get there: the fridge is clean. Now, you start dealing with the mess of what came out of it. You inspect each item to determine if it still serves you. A lot of it you throw out, and what you do put back in gets organized so that it all makes sense. Then, you move on to cabinets, taking everything out in a similar process. To clean we make messes. It’s part of the process.

We know when we have a cut, we need to keep it clean. We don’t heal the cut. It heals on its own but by keeping it clean we give it the best environment for that natural process to take place. We remove any obstacles that might prevent the healing. Even if we break a bone, the doctor doesn’t heal it, they only set the bone, meaning they put the bones in the best place for the healing to take place. This is true for all healing processes. The actual healing is done on its own, or by a natural principle, or by nature, or God. Our work is to remove the obstacles. Our preparation for the retreat was to identify those obstacles. Our participation on the retreat is the actual cleansing.

ACCEPTANCE, ADAPTATION, AND AFFIRMATION

Whenever we go somewhere unfamiliar there are immediate challenges to our comfort. Unfamiliar environments are often uncomfortable environments and to maximize our potential progress it is important to accept things as they are, especially when they are not the way we are used to them being. When going to the Amazon rainforest for an ayahuasca retreat, acceptance is a necessity. There is tremendous potential value in being immersed in not only a different environment but also a distinct culture as well, opening our minds to different lifestyles and belief systems. It is very common to gain a much greater appreciation for many things we take for granted back home.

The natural step following the acceptance of a new environment is adaptation. Adaptation is the most important characteristic contributing to growth. The cleansing process and healing transformation is a big enough challenge without paying attention to differences in daily routine or comfort. Your ability to adapt to the new way things are done during the retreat will determine the quality of the energy and attention you can devote to the fulfillment of your intentions. While it’s easy to talk about adaptation, it is a bit more challenging to actually adapt to the situation. Again, we can only try to do our best.

Whenever we are challenged to do our best, affirmation is incredibly helpful. This can be our own voice reminding ourselves that we can do it, that we trust the process, that we accept things as they are. But, in a retreat setting, you can also receive affirmation from the people who are there to support you, as well as other retreat participants. A healing retreat is a group effort, with everyone contributing what they can for their own healing, and to support each other’s healing. The easiest way to support one another is through affirmation, encouraging each person that they can accomplish their goals. Supporting others demonstrates your own determination as well.

COURAGE AND COMMUNICATION

Most of us understand that our healing will be challenging, much the same way we might understand that climbing a mountain will be challenging. The healing process often involves facing certain fears, remembering or even reliving painful events, and admitting and addressing our errors or detrimental characteristics. To go to the depths of where the roots of our afflictions must be pulled, we must be courageous. Remembering the phrase ‘whatever it takes’ can help us harness our courage to push forward, knowing that it will all work out.

An ayahuasca retreat is a group experience, and one of the most valuable aspects of being in a group is the support everyone provides for and receives from each other. Talking to the other participants, to the facilitators and the staff, is a great way to connect and strengthen that support system. If you’re feeling fear or you’re not sure you can face whatever it is you know you need to face, speaking to someone will often result in encouraging words and supportive energy sent your way. You’ll most likely form strong bonds as you share your thoughts and feelings and listen to others share theirs. It is much easier to find courage in the presence of others than when you feel you’re on your own. You are not on your own. The entire retreat is a team effort.

When faced with the choice to go further or turn back, we hope that our willingness to do whatever it takes, our trust in the process, our acceptance of how things are and our willingness to share, support, and communicate, activates the revival of our true power and the fulfillment of our true intentions. When we truly participate, fully committed, in trust and faith, we increase the likelihood of achieving our goals to the highest potential. When we can embrace it all, we are embraced by it all.

 

INTEGRATION

While it might seem like the retreat has ended when you return from the center and head home. It is just the beginning of the next phase of the healing process: integration. As challenging as the retreat may have been, hopefully at this point you only feel wonderful about it, knowing it was all worth it to experience such a profound transformation. Or perhaps you are still trying to make sense of some things, or have yet to come down to Earth, so to speak. Returning to the environment that was most likely contributing to the issues you sought to resolve will immediately present obvious challenges, or tests.

If you’ve ever had a fish tank, you know that if your fish got sick, you needed to clean the tank. In those times, you took the fish out of the tank and put them in clean water, maybe added a few drops of medicine, and then got to work cleaning the tank. Once it was clean, you put the fish back in and with a healthy environment, the fish recover their health. Going on a retreat is like removing yourself from the dirty tank and getting those drops of medicine. Your medicine is most likely more potent than what you give your fish, but the point is that when you go back home, it is you who must clean your tank. A big part of integration is maintaining the motivation to do that work.

Some of the work can be done simply by the way we respond to our environment. What may have created stress, anger, frustration, or negativity in the past we might now find doesn’t bother us anymore, because we understand things differently now. Integration is also about maintaining that new response program, expanding that improved understanding, and replacing more and more of the detrimental programming with beneficial perceptions and interpretations. So, upon returning home, there will be both outer and inner work to be done to maintain and expand the healing that took place on the retreat.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE STORY

Your journal is now such a valuable tool. Most likely, you will have recorded the new truths involved in your transformation, realizations of inaccuracies in your understanding of who you are and new interpretations of important experiences in your life. Forgiveness is often a way to generally describe our transformations, where we liberate ourselves to be able to give love again, to others and most importantly, to ourselves. By recording our new realizations of regaining self love and healing, we have a much better opportunity to remember and expand our awareness and continue the process of replacing our old detrimental programming with our new beneficial truths.

The first step of integration is to read your journal and refresh your mind to what took place on the retreat. Reading the journal on the way home is again a great idea, as the plane provides a mostly quiet environment with fewer distractions, but this can also be done when you’ve returned home and have settled in a bit more. Most likely, reading the journal will also provide deeper insights as you recognize connections of what happened on day two to what you were writing by day eight, for example. The transformation you experienced will most likely become clearer when you read the entire story. But the story is not over.

It is a good idea to continue to write in your journal when you get home. Now, your goal will be to record your observations about how you find yourself behaving differently, reacting and responding in a way that reduces detrimental thoughts and emotions. A good story doesn’t end right after the climax of the plot. There is always an example of how it all plays out, a riding off into the sunset type of description of how the character will now live their life. This part of the story is still left to write.

TRANSCRIBING THE STORY

I think it’s a great idea to transcribe your journal into digital format, as a Word or Google document. You will inevitably notice that when you read your journal for the first time, that it conjures many more thoughts and memories than are recorded. If you were to read one of your journal entries out loud to a friend, you would most likely be able to stop after every few sentences or paragraphs to elaborate with more information than you have written. By transcribing your journal into digital format, you make it much easier to add that additional information. It’s much easier to just click in between two sentences and type some more when you’re using a computer than it is to try to write in the margins of your journal.

Now, your story will become a project, something that you will continue to work on by writing more and more details about your experience. Just the transcription process will deepen your memories as you rewrite all of what you recorded. You can choose to add more to the story as you transcribe or to simply transcribe it as is and then go back and add more later. Either way, the process of editing and adding to your story will keep those memories and the impact of your experiences current, instead of fading into the past. This project will ensure that you will put attention and energy into describing the new truths that were formed during the retreat. This will help to solidify these new truths into your reality.

Every time you read your story and every time you edit or add to it, you will also be creating a new memory. While you may be working on the story that took place at the retreat, your work will be a new memory of what you did that day, at home. If someone were to ask you what you did last night you would now tell them a new memory about how you spent time writing your story. By making the story an ongoing project, you bring the experience, the insights, the realizations into your daily life. This further solidifies your new perspective and understanding, integrating your healing into your life back home.

 INTENTIONAL MEMORY CREATION

The process of memory building to continue to deepen the impact of your healing experience can be taken to another level with intentional memory creation. If you know that you will have a memorable experience, like going to visit your parents or taking a trip to the beach, you can intentionally combine your story project into the experience. For example, if you are going to visit your mother, you can bring your journal with you and either read it when you get to her house, or along the way, or you can show the journal to her, allowing her to read a passage, or to read a passage to her, or even to leave it with her. By intentionally including your story into your visit, you will most likely have further conversation about it, and when you remember your visit, you will also remember that you talked about your experience, or about the transformation you’re still experiencing.

If you go for a hike, you can bring your journal with you and intentionally select a special place in the woods, like at the base of a beautiful tree or on top of a gorgeous rock formation to read a particularly important passage from your journal. Being in nature and due to the powerful role of nature in the healing process, you may find a deeper connection to nature will result from the reading, but you will also have created a new memory intentionally. If someone asks you what you did over the weekend, you won’t just say that you went for a hike, your memory and story will include that you found a special spot and read a special passage from your journal. In this way, you will again keep deepening your realizations into a new program that brings you much more benefit. This will then have an impact on your behavior.

If you go out to eat with your mother, or stop for groceries on the way home from the hike, because you’ve incorporated your experience at the retreat into your current experiences and memories, you will most likely order differently at the restaurant, perhaps choosing a healthier selection, or you will buy different groceries that you know will contribute to the maintenance and continuation of good health in your life. In this way, you will be cleaning the dirty fish tank of your environment, both inner and outer. This is the essence of integration.

LIVING THE END OF THE STORY

While you are working on the project of this story and you are intentionally creating more memories that serve to deepen the solidity of your new way of being, you will also be writing the rest of the story, how it all plays out. So, you’ll be writing about your visit to your mother, how things were different, perhaps how there are still challenges in the dynamics of your relationship, but how there were noticeable differences.  You’ll write about how you read your journal with her, how you talked about your experience with her.

You’ll write about the hike you went on, and how you felt when you read your journal leaning against a two-hundred-year-old tree. You’ll write about how much more you noticed the beauty and magic of nature and felt that magic inside you as well. Ultimately, your story will never end, but the end of the project will be when you know that things will forever be the new way they’ve become, that your healing will last. When you know in your heart that the transformation will not fade, then your story, or this part of it, will come to an end and the project’s purpose will be complete.

Knowing that you are striving to fulfill the completion of your story will also have an impact on the way you live your life in the present. Knowing that you have yet to finish this project will motivate you to make even better decisions, to improve your behavior even more. When presented with a situation where you hope to make a better choice than you had in the past, the knowledge that you will be writing the experience into your story will help to support your desire to be the best you possible, and will give you more energy to achieve that goal.

ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

While I have presented the concept of our story by giving the example of writing it, it is really about ‘telling’ the story, and there are many ways to tell a story. Musicians tell stories with their music. Painters tell their story on canvases. Sculptors, poets, singers, dancers, and all types of artists use various mediums and platforms to express their stories. It doesn’t have to be written. I use writing as an example because it is the simplest way to describe the means to express a story and because if you are reading this, then you can write. You do not need to study or practice to be able to write.

But, if you feel more comfortable using a different method to tell your story, by all means use that method. I do think it is still a great idea to make your story a project, so if you are going to play music, then make an album, or if you’re going to paint, then paint a series. Tell your story however you feel like and combine forms of expression as well. Even if you’re writing you can also draw, you can also sing, you can also dance. The more forms of expression the better. Art is so important because it is a medium for the heart and gut to speak in their raw form. Including some type of artistic expression into your story project will definitely be beneficial.

The more invested you are in the project of telling your story, the more you will be thinking about it and the more energy you’ll be devoting to it. The more you care about it, the more impact it will have in your life. It will be what it is, meaning you’ll only put into it what you feel like putting into it, but you will also only get out of it what you put into it. So, if you can motivate yourself to give time to it regularly, you can help yourself to develop the project into a habit or discipline. This will happen organically, but your intentions can certainly help you move forward. In the end, you just do the best you can. It will always be enough.

WE ARE OUR STORIES

I hope this has helped you in some way to activate your own healing. We are our stories. We describe people by their stories. But we are not just the main character of our stories. We are also the author. Attending an ayahuasca retreat is a brilliant opportunity to fully embrace the authorship of our stories. The magic of the ayahuasca tradition can empower us to tell our stories in the most beneficial way possible, not only for our own well being, but also for everyone who hears our story. This is like the icing on the cake.

When we share our story with others, inevitably it will provide benefit for some, if not all, who receive it. For some of those people, your sharing of your story of healing and transformation will be the spark that motivates them to make significant changes in their own lives. People will thank you for sharing your story with them. They will send you positive energy and gratitude, and you will benefit further by receiving it. You will be able to heal your family, friends, and community in your own endeavors to heal yourself. You might not heal them completely, but you will plant the seed of healing in them when you share your story. Maybe you’ll only share your story with people close to you, or maybe you’ll share it with a large audience. No matter what, you will be contributing positively to the betterment of the world, which, in turn will continue to generate healing energy in your own life.

We can all contribute to the healing of the world, by working to heal ourselves through the process of rewriting our stories. By preparing for, participating in, and integrating our ayahuasca retreat experience, we can make a lasting change in our individual lives and the lives of countless others. That is the magic and power of ayahuasca, of nature, of the Earth. We are part of something truly magical, and we are blessed beyond our comprehension. We are walking, talking, living miracles. May we all share our miraculous magic with each other in love, peace, and harmony. Blessings all the way…