Abuela ayahuasca, the vine of the soul, has been revered as a master plant and spiritual teacher across millenia.

Ingesting properly prepared ayahuasca induces psychoactive effects.

You might have an opinion of "psychoactive effects" based on your experiences with (or hearsay regarding) LSD, psylocibin or other mushrooms, DMT, or even cannabis - but in my experience, those do not come close to the depths that ayahuasca reaches.

Acid, shrooms, and other psychedelics can lift the veil on reality, but aya pulls the sheets from your bed and throws a cold bucket of water on you. 

She is not here to fuck around. She is divine medicine and deserves to be honored as such.

I am here to tell my story of deep healing. If you want to know about my first experience with aya, go here. For what happened next, read on:

The morning after my first ayahuasca ceremony, I floated through the jungle in utter awe.

Aya still fluttered in my veins some 12+ hours after drinking the sticky, brown brew the night before. My motor skills were not fully returned and my wobbly legs wanted to walk in circles, but my senses were heightened. The rainforest awoke as I tiptoed back to the main house. 

I smelled sweet, bright fruits and flowers, unseen furry mammals, and rich, clean, soft Earth. Its moist warmth breathed across my skin.

I heard bugs crawling in the soil and on the leaves while the birds sang their new day greetings. Monkeys called to each other from the canopy, and ferns softly unfolded on the floor.  

I tasted the sweet air of a million trees exhaling, stretching themselves after their deep night's sleep. I filled my lungs with the most delicious oxygen on this planet. 

I saw things I had never seen before: the sun shone as if through a prism, rainbows breaking in each ray. Dirt was darker; plants were greener. Everywhere, all around me, the rainforest was vibrant and pulsating with energy.

I felt the radiation of LIFE surround and permeate me; my skin was no barrier to the "external" environment. Waves of electricity from my own cells rose and fell in harmony with the great sea of BEING. There was no separation between us.

My mind was thoroughly melted from the night before, and my body's gentle rocking with the rhythms of the rainforest felt perfect, natural, poetic, beautiful - not scary, not something to resist as I had done my whole life. It was a refreshing peace and calm.

I reached the main house and climbed the hardwood stairs to find my bed, a mattress on the floor draped with a mosquito net. I felt simultaneously exhausted and invigorated. My logic wanted rest before the afternoon's sharing circle, but my soul wanted to feel everything!

I chose to swing in a hammock for processing.

I wrote, thought, felt, and meditated until the Russians gathered, each taking a hammock until we formed a big swinging tribe of wide-eyed, glowing, newborn grown ups, every emotion shining through us.

The shaman, his shamanette girlfriend, and their apprentice took their places, prayed to the apus and Pachamama, and invited us each to speak in turn on our experience.

I felt a familiar chemical cascade of fear course through my nervous system - I had very intentionally not spoken my personal issues to anyone in over a decade. My emotions were too raw and painful, and even the thought of public speaking made me want to cry.

I felt this fear rise up in my again, but interestingly I did not identify with it. I saw the trigger and my reaction, and when it came my turn I said what I had resisted saying out loud for years:

"My sister died."

I paused for what felt like a lifetime while I felt the weight of this. The others waited patiently.

My beautiful sister. Kate. My built in best friend - I had not known life without her. She was super creative, a skilled seamstress and artist, friendly, gentle, and she loved nature. 

She was only 17 when she got bumps on her hairline and her collarbone. She went to the doctor, he said they were leftover from a cold. They got bigger; they looked bruised.  She went to another doctor. He told her it was cancer, and we all cried.

She went to the hospital. They gave her a round of chemo. Three weeks later, she got an infection, her organs shut down, and she was dead.

I thought I died that day too.

I had been broken, oh my god so broken! I made so many bad choices for so. many. years...I was in such terrible darkness, such hell! Oh my god my life was pain and misery and I prayed to please just let me die too...please just let me be with her...

But I didn't die.

Maybe it's because when things got really shit and I felt devastatingly lost and hopeless, I would pray to forces unknown that fuck if I can't die then please let me fucking heal so I can heal others too! Please make this make more sense!

Maybe it's because I found yoga. 

Maybe it's because my mission is not complete.

At one point, Peru called to me and wouldn't shut up, so I got on a plane and flew to Peru. I took buses and combis and taxis and tuk tuks and a riverboat to go through mountains and deserts and rivers and jungles to wind up in a center named after a lost Incan utopia to take a plant on the recommendation of a witch doctor who used it to cure her own cancer.

And it brought me back to life in ways I didn't think possible.

This plant brought shattered parts of myself back to wholeness. She illuminated the darkness. She eased my suffering, answered my prayers, and showed me impossibilities manifest. 

She made my sister's death make more sense.

Ayahuasca told me that I have to tell my story.

No one has to die from cancer.

So I said some iteration of this to the shaman and the Russians, and he calmly told me how he had witnessed miracles too. He came to the Amazon more than a decade ago to cure his own lifelong Crohn's disease, and dedicated his life to sharing the solutions he found for this and diabetes, cancer, depression, addiction, heart disease, and much more. 

Do you want to hear more about them? Please join me for Part 5 of these ayahuasca diaries. 

Part 1 here

Part 2 here

Part 3 here

💛 Sara!