#151 The Power of Psychedelics: Recovering from Stress and Trauma

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself and in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how Humans heal.

Hi, I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson and welcome to How Humans Heal Today. I'm really looking forward to sharing with you. About Me attending a shamanic journey in Amazon in Peru and I recently returned from Peru and this is my third time in a shamanic journey in Peru. I've actually attended numerous other retreats with a shaman in various locations outside of the United States, mainly because the psychedelic medicine called ayahuasca is not legal in the United States. So I have traveled to areas of the world where I've been able to access both the psychedelic medicine called ayahuasca, which I'm going to be talking about today, and the experience of being in ceremony with a shaman not just for one day, but sometimes these journeys or retreats could be either over 3 days, 6 days, 10 days, or in this most recent recent example, it was 16 days in a shamanic journey in the Peruvian Amazon. So I am looking forward to sharing with you about that experience. And really one of the main insights that I've had returning from that experience is how can I help guide you to receive the benefits of spending time in the Amazon by maybe not even having to go to the Amazon now of course, if you would like to, I am encouraging all of you who would like to and you're drawn to that experience. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me and I'd be happy to tell you more. But I know that there's many of you who might be thinking, well, are there ways that I could experience the benefits of a shamanic journey from home? And so I want to really describe it for you today so that you can see if this is something that you can integrate into your day to day. And that's actually what my goal is as I return from an experience like this is how can I integrate what I experience on this retreat and let's call the Dieta. How can I bring that experience from the Dieta into my day to day life? Because ultimately the Adiata experience, a shamanic journey, can be so healing. Yes, it can be healing to go on it, but I believe that it can also be healing for us to integrate aspects of it into our day to day life so that we're constantly getting the recovery, specifically stress recovery, which is absolutely my passion and interest in area of research for more than 20 years has been how to help humans recover from stress. And that's what even led me to be curious about going to the Amazon and working with a shaman and trying ayahuasca as a psychedelic medicine was because of my interest in and undying desire to help us humans recover from stress exposure. Because what I've learned over the years is that it's not about trying to get to zero stress. And I really also saw this so clearly in my experience in the Amazon. It's not about having zero stress. That's not what happens there. There's still stress that exists even in the Amazon. Right? There's always going to be challenges that we face each day. There's always going to be guidelines we need to follow. There's always going to. This is going to exist in the human experience wherever we are. So it's not about no stress or zero stress or being stress free. That is not the goal. The goal is how do we live our lives and do what live our purpose and our passion and at the same time support ourselves to recover from the stresses that we're exposed to in our human life existence. And I'm going to share more about that with you because it really, this message is not just this is what I've seen over the years, but what I also have heard directly from the shaman that I work with and other shamans in that shamanistic approach. It's about learning to give ourselves the compassion and, and love and space and support to be present and to process what we've been through. Sometimes it's what we've put ourselves through, sometimes it's what others have done to us. But if we stay in a state of stress and resentment and anger and criticism and negativity about what we've been through, he traumas, abuse, substance abuse, addiction, toxicity in our relationships, toxicity in our experience, constant demands and stress. It's again, it's what we observed sometimes in childhood, sometimes it's what we experience the trauma in childhood. More than 50% of adults experienced trauma trauma in childhood. So I know that is very common. And if you're listening, likely you're in that more than 60% of adults who experienced childhood trauma, at least one, sometimes more than one childhood trauma. So we know humans even from the, even from being in our mother's womb to being born we're exposed to stress and trauma, and it's, it's to say that.

It happens. You know, we would like for it to not happen. We, our goal is to be able to even decrease the percentages of trauma that we're exposed to. But I believe that the only way we're in future generations gonna be able to decrease our exposure to trauma and our future generations exposure to trauma is to heal ourselves of trauma. If we're not healing ourselves, the pattern's going to repeat. And that's one other insight I really took away from my experience working with a shaman in, in this dieta in particular, is that this medicine, shamanistic medicine, which I'm going to describe to you, has the ability to heal us from this lifetime trauma and stress exposure, but is also helping us to heal transgenerational trauma.

And there's very few things that have the ability to do that. And I've been researching strengths and trauma recovery for over 20 years. This is what I research, this is what I do in my clinical practice. This is what I write about in the five books that I published at this point in time. This is the work that I do is read and research and help humans recover from trauma. And what I experienced in Amazon in working with the shaman is one of the only most effective treatments I've found to help humans recover from stress exposure. So again, it's not about trying to avoid all stress. It's not about trying to have zero stress. It's about re validating our stress exposure.

Not dismissing it, not pushing it under the rug, pulling up the rug and saying, yes, I have been exposed to trauma. And by being present with it, by feeling the feelings, by, by dropping our masks and dropping our protected self, right? We, we a lot of times develop a protection to. Even though there's a wound from that trauma, we develop a protected self that is thinking that it's protecting us from the wound, but it's actually the wound is festering underneath. And the protected self is just a mask, an illusion, a facade. And we go through our lives with this mask that we present to the world and other relationships and people we're with. But underneath, we have this wound of abandonment, of rejection, of hurt, of abuse, of trauma. That wound is there in most all of us. And as long as that wound is there, we're. We actually end up bringing more trauma into our lives. We're attracting more stress because it resonates with the state of unhealed trauma and wound. And so then we're like, well, why does this Stress just keep happening to me because on a subconscious level, on an energetic level, it's. It continues because the pattern's gonna continue because that's what's familiar. What's. When we're familiar with chaos and stress from a young age, we end up finding ourselves choosing it subconsciously without even realizing it. It happened to me. I kept finding myself in more stressful situations. Why? Because I, because of my childhood stress. It just is going to happen. No judgment of anyone, no, no criticism. It's a matter of. This is such a common human experience. And so this is what I research is how do we help ourselves recover? We know that stress causes imbalances of cortisol, neurotransmitters, digestion, gut bacteria, microbiome in general, blood sugar levels, you name it, hormone imbalances. Everything is out of balance because the stress causes. Causes the stress and the trauma causes imbalances. And then those imbalances perpetuate more imbalances and those imbalances create illness, creates anxiety, depression, all mental health and illness, migraines like I experienced physical pain, autoimmunity, dementia, heart disease, diabetes, you name it. All the diseases we experience is from unresolved stress and trauma. So that's why I feel so motivated. People say to me, why would you go all the way to the Amazon? Why would you leave your family in your home? Why would I leave my practice and have to be away from my patients when. And this is the Amazon experience. In the Amazon experience, there's no WI fi, there's no cell phone, the cell phone service doesn't work. Literally taking myself out of the day to day experience completely. There's no running water, there's no electricity.

There's, there's. I go to, When I go to the Amazon, I'm in a single room, a little cabin called a tumbo that has no electricity, no running water, no plumbing. It has a wood floor and a bed and the walls are mesh. So I'm completely in nature, surrounded by trees, plants, eaves, insects, birds, frogs.

Enveloped in nature completely just land in the middle of Amazon jungle. Enough rainforest in the rain, in the thunder, in the, in the sounds of the jungle in the. And there's different sounds in the jungle during the day than at night. It's a symphony of insects and frogs and birds.

Doing their beautiful music all day, all night. Different music during the day than at night. And when it gets dark.

I could light a candle, I could put on a flashlight, but. But it's like my brain knows it's dark. I'm re syncing my circadian rhythm and sleep wake cycle. Because it's darkness when there's no light I can turn on and, and no computer, it's darkness. It's time to go to sleep. And then you're. I'm sleeping to the sounds of nature. And I'm waking up to the sounds of nature completely re syncing with nature. It's, it's in research they call it forest bathing. Japanese, there's even Japanese words for forest bathing and the healing properties. There's research on the healing properties of being in nature. And this is healing being in the rainforest.

Rainforest which is mostly plant. The highest percentage is plants and, and fungus. And then the other high percentage is ants. There's different kinds of ants running ant highways, doing all the amazing things that ants do, let alone all the other insects that I could observe from my one room little cabin by myself. By myself. Now there's a, it's an, on a property with a, a bunch of these cabins. So there are maybe 25 or 30 people each in their own cabin but we're in our own space. So I'm, I don't have my pets, I don't have my daughter, I don't have my family, I don't have my patients, I don't have my computer going, I don't have zoom going.

And what am I going to do instead? I'm going to wake up and I'm going to do some of the same things I usually do. Like I'm going to brush my teeth and then I'm not going to use regular toothpaste, I'm using baking soda to brush my teeth. I'm going to not apply any, any kind of substances to my body. The only thing I'm eating and drinking is it following a very specific diet which is I'm going to describe here in a minute. So they bring the food to me two meals per day. They bring the food to me on this property. So I'm not going to the grocery store, I'm not cooking. The food is coming to me. So I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna journal. And I did. This is my self care notebook that I brought with me and I filled it, I filled in 16 days. I feel filled this, filled this journal because I one thing I could do is get up and I could write, write about my dreams, write about my insights, write about the food I was eating, write about my, about what was going on. So I would be journaling. I was also reading. I had one book with me Which I was reading and. And then I would be observing, observing the, the lizards walking by and going down to the creek and sitting in the, in the water to rinse off and experience.

Sunlight exposure, sweating, and then going in the water for cold water therapy. So I'm doing healing in this nature setting. In fact, one day I realized that my little cabin, my little tombow, was my healing clinic. Literally, I was in a hospital room in Amazon. My hospital room where I'm. I'm in my healing space. I'm doing healing things like sleeping, like journaling, like reading, like going out in nature and getting in the sunlight and getting in the water in the creek. Being in nature, literally. So it was a healing clinic in nature for 16 days. So I started to think to myself, oh my gosh, if I need to go to a hospital or a healing clinic, this is a healing clinic that I would prefer where I'm not taking medications. I'm. And I'm getting out of pain, physical pain gone, emotional pain. We're processing the whole time. So it's a very active healing process in the Amazon. I'm not doing nothing. I'm not watching movies. I'm observing nature and allowing nature to heal me. And so is such a. Such a beautiful experience. But again, as you listen to me, I encourage you to think about how can you.

Use aspects of this even at home? How can we integrate time to just be present in the moment? How can we rethink ourselves with circadian rhythm and when it gets dark, turn out the lights and go to bed. How can we.

Sometimes turn, even turn off? You could turn off your electricity or your route, your wi fi router. Give yourself a break from all the technology. Can you be spending time in nature each day doing breathing? I would do my exercises each day I would do exercise, breathing, meditation. I would even practice my dance and music. I was taking lessons to learn how to play the charongo. I've never played the trungle before in my life. And every other day I would go to a lesson to learn how to play a trongo, which is a Peruvian instrument, sort of like a small guitar or like a ukulele. I'm learning this music. It's medicine music. We know music is so, so healing to the human nervous system in general, stress recovery. And there's certain songs that are used in shamanism, and the songs are used in ceremony. And I have been learning those songs over the past couple years. And this time in the Amazon, I also not only was learning the lyrics, but learning to Play the drongo and the what's called maracas or rattles to play with the music. So this way I'm also experiencing healing through the medicine music. And not only just listening to the medicine music, but learning how to play it as well. And this is right, we, you can spend some time each day or each week learning music, singing, playing an instrument, if you play an instrument, learning how to play an instrument, for that matter, you can be learning to move and dance and exercise. Movement is very important part of it. Walking, taking walks in nature, all of these things we can to some degree integrate into our day to day life. Right. So in terms of the diet and I what I did is I am researching the diet that I followed on this data. So I as a clinical nutritionist took note of exactly the food and the amounts and the quantities into pictures so I can in detail analyze the diet. But what I can tell you already from my analysis is that this is a diet where first of all there's no sugar, no caffeine, no chocolate, right? So already even preparing to go, I was already started to avoid these things. I really don't have alcohol in my diet anyway and I have very little sugar in my diet and I have very small amounts of caffeine, so I needed to decrease caffeine. And also this diet is gluten free, dairy free and let me think what else, no sugar. So it's a very anti inflammatory diet already. Just by avoiding gluten and dairy, it's anti inflammatory and then it's mostly plant based. There was the option to have some animal protein. Not every day, but like maybe four times out of 16 days I could choose to have fish, local fish, wild fish, like a trout, it's kind of like a trout fish. And there was a couple, a couple times where I had access to chicken, local chicken. And also, let me see, eggs. There were some eggs on the diet if a person wanted to have eggs. Otherwise the diet was mostly brown rice, quinoa, potatoes, occasionally avocado, carrots, broccoli, sometimes cucumber. And let's see, those were the main things. And so we would be served like so twice a day. They would bring, and I would have one bowl, so I just wash the bowl and get another meal in the same bowl. And it would maybe be like they might bring a cup of brown rice and maybe one small potato and maybe either like carrots and broccoli or it might be an egg that goes with the egg with the brown rice and the potato. No salt, no dressing, no Nothing, no flavoring to go on it, no, no herbs even, just simply the food. And amazingly, when you simplify your diet like that, it's amazing how good rice tastes. You know, you just go, wow. We really start to get mindful and enjoy the taste of every bite of food. Potato. A taste of potato is amazing. Just potato by itself. So this diet is very consistent with what's called a fasting mimicking diet, which is actually higher in carbs and lower in protein and fat. Now as I mentioned this I want to emphasize this is not necessarily a diet you're going to follow all the time. In fact, usually a fasting mimicking diet you might only follow for a short period of time, like five days to, in my, in this situation it was 16 days, a short period of time, only a couple or a few times a year. This is not the kind of diet you're gonna wanna try to follow all the time. So please, as you're listening, know that this is a very specific diet and it is meant for when you're able to really change your daily routine. Also because if you're exercising more or you're in a busy daily activities, you're going to need more protein. So in this kind of a diet where, where I was following that higher carbohydrate, about 80% carbohydrate, about 10% protein and 10% fat. There's, it's going to be a diet you're going to follow when you're, your energy level is lower, you're spending more time journaling and reading and doing low key activities and, and some exercise, but not too intensive exercise. Okay. So it's very important to recognize that this is a very specific healing diet for a specific time period in a specific pattern. So this is a diet that is specifically used in this type of setting and also with the use of ayahuasca. So I wanna make sure that that's clear. But there are aspects of some of these diet changes that you could potentially implement from home. You might set aside five days or, or two weeks that you want to do a fasting mimicking diet, or you might just start by decreasing inflammatory foods. Right. So there's ways to integrate aspects of this in a way that's not stressful for your body. It's always important to keep all of this in mind and that's why I'm here to help guide you. And I'm in the process of developing a 14 day detox program so that I can guide you how to implement this from home, how to Safely implement dietary changes that can help your body heal, even if you're not all the way in the Amazon doing a dieta. And so please, I'll, I'll make a note so that you can down below in these notes for with this video, learn more about how I can guide you to implement these kind of diet changes to benefit your health. Because ultimately, when you follow some of these diet changes, what we're doing is we're helping our body recover from stress. We're decreasing inflammation, we're doing hearing of the digestion. We're also doing detoxification and we're helping ourselves to reset and clean out. There's something called autophagy, which is when the body is stimulated to release old cells, cells that are no longer serving us, that just need to be cleaned out and let go, and to stimulate the body to build and make new healthy cells with new healthy mitochondria. It's very healing for the brain and nervous system as well as the whole body. And so doing a diet like this or a detoxification can be a great way to stimulate autophagy and detoxification, basically resetting and cleaning out your body and actually increasing your longevity. This study show it can actually help you live longer, also by preventing health issues. Again, this is not necessarily a diet you're gonna follow all the time, but we do want to create a diet that you can follow all the time. It's a lower inflammation, helping to balance your blood sugar levels, balance your insulin and other hormones, balance your appetite, and even solve I mentioned before addictions to substances, But I think as humans we can also become addicted to foods. We can become addict, addicted to sugar, we can become addicted to caffeine. And by following a diet like this, we can help ourselves resolve those addictions. Become. It's not that you're not going to enjoy caffeine sometimes, there's not that you're not going to enjoy chocolate sometimes, but it's about being able to choose it intentionally and enjoying it without having an addiction and dependency on even some of these natural substances. Right? How do we, how do we help our bodies to function more fully on our own so that we can have a healthy energy level without being dependent on caffeine, for example. Or how do we have a balanced mood without having to reach for a substance like alcohol to help us with stress? How do we help our bodies resolve the stress? And you might choose alcohol for other reasons, but instead of being dependent on it. Same with. And this is a thing that also was a major insight for me on this recent experience in Amazon is that, I mean, I'm going to take it back to I grew up in a pharmacy. My father was a pharmacist, and he ran a chain of over 1200 pharmacies. So I grew up in a pharmacy and I grew up with a pharmacist as my father, who was, I was learning about pharmaceuticals. And of course, pharmaceutical companies have created medicines that have saved lives and have changed our course of human experience. So it's not to say that all pharmaceuticals are bad, but what I want to emphasize is what my dad taught me from a young age, which is that really we want to help our health, support our health, and prevent the need for medications whenever possible. And so that's what I really took from my childhood, is how could I be choosing diet, nutrients, time in nature, that's going to help my body be as healthy as can be, help me recover from stress and prevent the need for medications whenever possible. And that's what really motivated me to become a naturopathic doctor, clinical nutritionist, midwife. And to be practicing and researching all these years is really from that same premise. How can we use substances from nature, like food and nutrients and herbs or plants, to help us heal and prevent the need for medications? Mainly because medications do tend to have side effects, withdrawal symptoms and dependency. So we can use them if needed and when needed, for as long as needed. But if there's ways to avoid it, then that's always going to be a better option, right? So it's not to judge any use of medications. There's times when I've needed to take medications too, but it's about, hey, how? What can we do to support our health and help our bodies with their own internal healing process as much as possible, and then if needed, then use medications or pharmaceuticals. So I realized that in the, in the medical system in the United States and other areas of the world that I've observed, it's unfortunately sometimes pushed over to the side. It's not this balanced view. It's more like, seems like the only option when you go to a clinic and to see a practitioner, the only option is a medication or the only option is a procedure or a surgery. Instead of hearing, oh, and you might hear, oh, well, you just need to reduce your stress. But a lot of times people are left with, well, how am I supposed to do that? Because I have a lot of things I need to worry about, right? So I'm here to say it's not just about managing or controlling your stress. It's about learning how to help your body recover from stress. And that's not common language in our society and in our and not in our medical system. So this is why I do what I do is to help help to bring this language in and to explain what it means and ways to access stress recovery. Now, there are things of course you can do. You can go for a walk outside, you can learn to do breathing, you could do meditation, you can listen to music. All of these things we can access relatively easily and low cost. And you can also go to a therapist who helps with talking or you can do journaling. If someone. So many tools. I talk about this in my master stress book in the recovery activities. So much research on all of these things. And so yes, these tools maybe you've already been accessing, including exercise, including healthy diets. But what I want to encourage you to notice is that sometimes as humans, we even can push ourselves too hard to and we end up doing too much of a good thing. Too much exercise can be stressful and end up raising our cortisol levels again, too much intermittent, intermittent fasting can be increasing cortisol levels again, too much of anything, too much kale, too much greens in your smoothie, too much. Too much healthy food is still too much. We could be overfeeding our bacteria and creating dysbiosis and overgrowing bacteria, right? So it's not about doing too much. This is this what's I refer to as the Goldilocks principle. You know, Goldilocks had to go, oh, well, this is. This porridge is too big and this porridge is too small. But this porridge is just right. And just right is different for all of us. And I really believe that so much of our human experiences if we can listen to our own bodies and learn to be realigned with ourselves instead of being so distracted with everything else out there that we're should we're supposed to do or we should do instead of all the woulda, coulda, shouldas, we gotta put our attention back inside of ourselves and realign and listen to our own selves and our own bodies relearn what it is to live in a human body. What do human bodies do at the most basic? Basic. And this is why when I go to the Amazon and I'm living in a single room little cabin in nature, what does my human body do? My human body eats. I eat the food, the very simple food they bring to me twice a day. I sleep when it's dark. So simple. I drink water that filtered Water that I was, that was there at my cabin, I can drink water. They would also bring me herbal tea herbs from the Amazon. Herbs like una de gata which is cat's claw which is anti inflammatory plant. Renekia, tawari and bobinzana. These were all herbs that were brewed into a tea and brought to me each day. Anti inflammatory, immune supportive, anti cancer detoxification. Helping my body heal. So I'm drinking this herbal teas from the Amazon while eating these local foods and doing very simple things. Very simple things. Eat. I you know, go to the bathroom. I had an outdoor bathroom, no running water. Sometimes there was insects there with me. One day I went out and I saw, I actually saw a snake.

Like 10 foot long black snake crossing the path. And it's like realize that can trigger my adrenaline. Yes, adrenaline is an important thing. It helped me to get out of danger. I'm not gonna. If I see a snake, I want adrenaline to help me to walk the other way. So again it's not about having zero stress. It's about. I want my stress response to protect me when necessary. Help me get out of danger and then correct itself. I can breathe and get my stress response to calm back down again and get myself back into recentered place. Okay, so this is, this is this Amazon experience and how it helps me to get back in connection with myself. I'm not distracted with all the other million things going on. I had to actually one day just my mind had all a whole to do list that wasn't going to get done because I couldn't make any phone calls and I couldn't use my email. So what I did is I pulled out my notebook and I just made a list. Here's all the things I'm going to do when I get back. Here's the things that were on my, in the back of my mind that I hadn't even been able to do at home. So what's the difference? I can't do them from there either. I make a list and then I can say when I get back I'm going to create time in my schedule to take care of these things and make sure they get done. So when I write them down then I'm like okay, no, I'm not going to think about that. I'm going to think about what I can do while I'm here. What kind of healing can I do in the Amazon? So one of the other aspects of healing is that use of the. It's really a plant mixture called ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a traditional plant mixture that I don't, it's been around for, I don't even know, ages and used in.

Countries that are, that have access to the Amazon. Because ayahuasca is a vine that grows in the Amazon. At first when it's a small plant, it just looks like a nice plant with green leaves. And then what it does is it, it finds a tree to grow around. It's a vine that grows up the tree. And when you think about, if you think about like a rainforest, there's different sizes of plants, right? There's plants that are small, close to the ground, and then there's medium size and then there's higher up trees and there's even higher trees. And what do all plants need? They need access to sunlight because that's how they get their, their energy to grow. And they need access to water too, right? And it's a rainforest, so they get water and they get sunlight. So if, if, if it's a vine, it's going to need to climb up a tree in order to access the sunlight. And so as ayahuasca grows, it wraps around the tree and the, when, when we use ayahuasca as a medicinal plant, we, we're not using the leaves, we're using the vine part of it as it grows, it's like a rope. It becomes like a rope that's intertwined like this. So when you, when they cut the vine off of the tree and they can cut off the bark of the vine, then they get to the inner part of the vine. And there's several substances that have been identified in ayahuasca vine, including hermine and hermaline. And these are.

Substances that are active in the human body. Now what happens is the ayahuasca that they brew for shamanistic ceremonies is combined with at least one, and usually also two other plants. One is called the chakaruna and these are the leaves. The chakaruna has different leaves that contain the substance known as dmt. And DMT is a psychoactive substance. Um, you can, you know, now DMT has been isolated and people, you know, now they're even.

Being able to isolate DMT and give it to people by itself. Um, DMT stands for dimethyl tryptamine. I'll write that in the notes. And it's in. Actually the human body actually can make dmt. We have our own in endogenous production of dmt. So it's not a foreign chemical. Actually the human body makes it and is familiar with it. And we can get it from different kinds of plants and animals for that matter. And so this chakaruna plant contain. That leaves contain dmt. So when the ayahuasca vine is literally put in a big pot with these leaves and water, and then the other, there's one other plant leaves that are also put in there. It also has high DMT in that third plant. And then they're boiled in like a. Like just imagine a big tea with big, big vine and big leaves in there. And it's brewed in water for days. So this is boiling for days to create this.

Basically, it's like a tea, but it's thicker than that. It becomes like a thick, almost like a molasses. If you think about like a dark liquid that's a little bit thick, that's what it looks like. And so when you take ayahuasca, you're usually taking, you know, rather small quantity, maybe 20ml to 40ml, and it's dispensed by the shaman. So a person's not just taking it themselves. When you take ayahuasca, it's traditionally taken in a ceremony because there's a very sacred. It's considered a very sacred thing to do. It's a very sacred experience. Because ayahuasca not only gives visions from the dmt, but ayahuasca, it's considered bespoke spirit of the plant, and it's considered a spiritual accessing the spiritual realm. Because when you take ayahuasca, you don't become. It's not like alcohol. Some people would say to me, is it like when you drink too much alcohol? It's nothing like that. Nothing like that. When someone drinks too much alcohol, they don't even remember what they're doing. They don't know what they're doing. They're very chaotic. And that doesn't happen with ayahuasca, not in a shamanistic ceremony. In a ceremony, you might be in a. In a round seating position with however many people are in the ceremony. Maybe 5, maybe 25 or 35. Each person is sitting on their own cushion or pillow in their own space. And the guidelines are to stay in your own space and not touch anyone else and not talk to anyone else. So it's a very internal process. You're in your own space and you're keeping to yourself and you're noticing your feelings, your thoughts, your visions, your experience. Meanwhile, the shaman is running the ceremony and going through a process. We have a very structured process that they go through, singing certain songs called ikaros and medicine music, which is very soothing and works with the medicine to help you experience.

Insights and, and the experiences of the medicine. So that shaman is leading, using instruments, using, you know, from maracas to harmonica sometimes or drums. They're using the music to guide the ceremony and the experience. And each person then goes to the shaman and they dispense the amount of ayahuasca that they have determined is the amount for you. So you're not gonna like overdo it. You're gonna. With a shaman who's a really well trained ayahuasca, someone who's dispensing ayahuasca, they're going to start you with a small dose so you can get a sense of how does it feel, how does it, what is the experience like? So then you can, you could take a second dose maybe or a third dose. It usually takes about 45 minutes or an hour to start working. And then maybe an hour later you might say, hey, I'm going to take a little bit more and an hour later, okay, do I want to have a little bit more? You don't have to. It's all based on your experience and how you're feeling it. And all very safe. I've never seen anything in ceremony that was not safe and, and, and protected. It's a very important aspect of choosing a shaman to work with is that they create a safe space for people to. You can get up and walk and go to the bathroom when you need to. You, but you mostly want to stay in your space so that you can do your work. Because really when you take ayahuasca, it's emotional processing. You're you, you might be remembering things, you might be having insights, you want to be paying attention. You don't want to miss these beautiful, amazing insights. Right? So you're like, I want to be in my space, I want to be paying attention and I want to be comfortable doing that and not distracting other people. So it's a very special sacred experience. And in this 16 day experience, there were eight ceremonies. And each ceremony lasts five or six hours. So it's usually in the evening, let's say from 5pm to 11pM or occasionally we do a daytime ceremony from 5am to 11 in the morning. Okay, so all of this is just to give you an, a sense of how these shamanistic ceremonies work. And, and already I've told you what we do during the day when we're not in ceremony. Usually the ceremonies were every other day. Um, it depends though. Some different retreats it might be every day, multiple days in a row, and then take a day off. So what's happening with this ayahuasca brew? I think you have a sense of the, the brew and then the thing that I've, I've. There's a lot of research and case reports of use of ayahuasca. Um, the thing that I think is so interesting is that it really is, is a medicine that has this capability to be healing us on a physical level, emotional level and spiritual level all at the same time. Whereas many substances that we're exposed to might just be healing us on a physical level or maybe just on an emotional level. This has the capability to heal on all levels at the same time. And because it's so healing on the nervous system, literally I can feel, feel my nervous system and my nerves just experiencing healing. And then it's especially one of the main nerves in our bodies is the vagus nerve. So of course the vagus nerve is also healing when you're, when you take ayahuasca. And the vagus nerve is so important for communication between our brain and our body, the whole mind body connection, let alone the gut brain connection. So if the vagus nerve is a mean longest nerve connecting our brain to our gut and our brain to our, all of our other hormone production and our lungs and our heart, everything, right? So if, if, when we're under stress, exposure, one of the main nerves that's affected by that is the vagus nerve, we get into like a, I think of it like a spasm of the vagus nerve. And then we experience more and more anxiety and more and more triggers to our experiences in our day to day life. And we can do things to help the vagus nerve heal like breathing, like drinking water, like cold water therapy, like meditation. There's so many things that can help us heal. And also ayahuasca is very healing to the vagus nerve. And as the vagus nerve is healing. So while with ayahuasca, one of the main tools we use is breathing. One of the things that helps me most when I take ayahuasca is taking deep breaths, taking sips of water. And some people then experience, because a lot of people hear about the vomiting that can happen with ayahuasca, but it's because ayahuasca is working on the vagus nerve so it can trigger a gag reflex. You can potentially, it can potentially cause you to vomit. But usually within four hours of the ceremony you have not eaten. So the only thing you're vomiting is the ayahuasca itself. So if you drink, you know, two little ounces or less and maybe a half an ounce of ayahuasca, and then you throw up the ayahuasca. You're only throwing up ayahuasca and the water that you drink. And you usually have a bucket there. Each person has their own bucket. So there's no drama with trying to do it. You just feel like you're gonna spit up this ayahuasca and you may vomit it up. There's many times I take ayahuasca that I don't experience vomiting. It is more rare for me at this point. So I just want people to know that it's not like food poisoning. It's not like you're vomiting for 24 hours. It's maybe one or twi, once or twice, depending on your body. And to me it's part of the cleansing. It's part of the reset that the plant creates. And, and actually in shamanism, they talk about it as purging the toxins or the negative emotions. You can, whenever you're vomiting, you're letting something out that you're. That your body needed to let go of. You can also, it can also stimulate bowel movement. So some people may find they need to go to the bathroom after taking ayahuasca. Or some I find it does can be stimulating to the bladder. It makes you feel like you need to pee. It's not nothing painful or disconcerting, but it's just. You just feel your nervous system communicating to all aspects of your body. Uterus, sometimes bladder. You feel your muscles relax, you feel your nervous system resetting. It's also anti inflammatory, so it decreases pain. It's an analgesic. So sometimes if you're in back pain and then you go into ceremony, the back pain goes away while you're in the middle of the medicine because it's analgesic. It's to me very healing to my body because my body has a condition of chronic inflammation. So I really experience so much healing on a physical level for ayahuasca. Anti inflammatory analgesic, very healing to the nervous system. I haven't had a migraine since starting to, since starting to work with this shaman and do these activities. But at the same time, ayahuasca is not addictive. You, you don't have an addiction to ayahuasca. It's at first, it's an intense experience. I think that's part of it. But all of also it's just not an addictive substance. So it's not like you need more or want more. The only reason you might choose to attend Mar Ayahuasca ceremonies is because you want the healing. It's. It's intense and you're going through emotional work. You're. You might be from. Sometimes I might not be vomiting, but I might be crying because I'm processing emotions of. Of gratitude and love, which sometimes makes us feel this huge amount of love inside. But it can also make you cry from feeling so much love and gratitude. Then connection with yourself, connection with yourself and who you are, connection with your family, gratitude for the people in your life. The amount of gratitude that's experienced is like, beyond anything I could describe. It's like, just so opening in connecting with oneself and connecting with a feeling of love and gratitude, which is so healing. We know love and gratitude are healing to us. So this medicine can be so healing. And the other people in the. I've been in now more than 70 ayahuasca ceremonies with hundreds of different people from around the world, not from the. Not just the United States, from all around the world. And they've shared their stories of trauma, of sexual abuse, substance abuse, drug use, difficulties in their lives, divorces, toxic relationships, challenges with their. Their job, wanting to change their job, wanting to, you know, really showing. This is what humans go through. This is what. And I've seen it too, from my patients, this is what humans go through health issues and so many other stresses in our lives. And to find a healing experience like this in nature with a healing substance like ayahuasca, served by an experienced shaman who can help you get the benefit from this medicine. And this experience is, to me, so important that you know about. It doesn't mean that I recommend this for everyone. It doesn't because I don't. First of all, it may not be necessary for you, and it's intense. You might not be able to travel there. You, You. There might be reasons why this isn't the right solution for you. So I don't want to make it seem that I'm saying this is right for everyone, but my intention is for you to just know that it exists as an option. Because if your experiences you're in emotional pain, physical pain, and you're feeling very stuck in your life, and you feel like you've tried everything else, then I want you to know that this also is a possibility. Now, in the United States and some bunch of other countries right now, it's not considered legal because psychedelic substances are not. Are not legal at the time that I'm recording this. I sincerely hope that in the near future that will be reconsidered because this is such a healing medicine and such a healing way to deliver this medicine. It's not intended to just be something you buy at the store and take on your own. This is a medicine that's intended to be used in ceremony with others in a healing experience. And a lot of times even better if it can be used in the Amazon in a healing retreat property like I went to. But I do think there's ways that we can find to give people access to this healing medicine in an appropriate way so that you can receive the healing benefits of this medicine. And it's something where you don't necessarily have to be going so many times as me. I have been doing this because it's part of my research, I'm part of my work. This is not, not that everybody needs to do as many ceremonies as I have. Most people might do just a handful and then it. The healing stays with you. So when you come back home and, and you're no longer taking ayahuasca on a regular basis, the hearing that you experience, experience stays with you. That's why they talk about an integration process. You, you're transformed from hearing those wounds, letting go of those protective mechanisms, learning to love yourself and trust yourself and trust your body again. That doesn't just disappear. You come home and you bring that with you and you inter. Can integrate it into your life. And I see it as this would be used in connection with everything else that I teach, including the clean eating that you can do from home, the maintaining healthy sleep, recovery activities, exercise. So all of the care that you do anyway is your foundation and as well as any herbs and nutrients that are appropriate for your body that you, you know, you might need more of certain nutrients or to maintain your healthy cortisol levels and hormone levels and digestion. We do all of that and this is a healing medicine experience that can help you release what you've been through, release traumas, reconnect with yourself and your purpose so that you can come back to your life feeling more empowered, feeling more yourself. That's what I would say is it allows me to be myself and do what I am meant to do through my personality, through my spirit, through my soul. This is me being me without all of the restrictions and, and blocks that may have been there before.

So that's my experience with using ayahuasca and working with a shaman and this particular recent journey to the Amazon. I'll be sharing more in terms of pictures and videos. And as mentioned, I'm developing a detox 14 day detox where I can teach you to integrate and implement this into your lives at home or wherever you are now. And if you're interested in psychedelic medicine and specifically about Ayahuasca or other psychedelic medicine and I encourage you to reach out to me so I can help you learn more about it. I definitely have blogs and other podcasts on these topics. I just want you to know what's possible because I never want anyone to feel like you experienced trauma and now you're stuck or you stuck in a repeated pattern of pain and turmoil. Because there's so much we can do to help you heal and recover. I always would want you to know that that's possible and where you can look and ask questions and go to access that healing. Thanks so much for joining me today. Please do like and subscribe or send me a review for this podcast. I love for you to join me again at the next episode. You can also sign up for my newsletter so that you receive an email when each new episode comes out. And I can't wait to see you all again soon. Have a good day.

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