Ayahuasca Ceremony Overview
Our ayahuasca ceremonies take place in darkness, after the sun has set. Each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we all meet in the maloka (ceremony room) at 7pm; everyone has their own mat and we will begin with an hour of silence to allow everyone to settle into their own space. We will serve the ayahuasca at about 8pm. Ceremonies last for 4-5 hours and we close the ceremony around 1am.
Before your first ceremony, we will give you a thorough talk about how we run our ceremonies and some helpful tips on working with ayahuasca. Be sure to eat breakfast and a light lunch before you leave for the retreat center; you won’t be eating dinner on ceremony days.
Throughout the entire ceremony, the curanderos (a.k.a. maestros, teachers, healers, sometimes called “shamans”) will be singing healing songs, called icaros, in Spanish and Shipibo—the languages they speak. These songs are essential for keeping the space safe and for bringing healing to all of the participants. If you ever find yourself not knowing what to do during ceremony, focus on the songs. They can be like life rafts you can hold on to for support, comfort, and guidance.
The facilitators will be checking on you throughout the night to see if you need anything. We are here for you all night, whether you need something physical (toilet paper to blow your nose, a hand to hold) or emotional support and guidance. Half-way through the ceremony, there will be an opportunity to take a second dose if necessary.
Towards the end of the ceremony, each guest will be brought up one by one to sit in front of one of the curanderos for a personal icaro, or limpieza (the Spanish word for cleaning), directed towards that guest’s specific needs. During this time, if you are participating in a plant dieta, the curandero will connect you with the plant spirit of your dieta. Whether you are on a dieta or not, limpiezas/personal healings can be a very powerful part of the ceremony where the entire focus of a professional healer is on you. When all of the ceremony participants have received their limpiezas, we will announce the end of the ceremony.
If you still need help after ceremony, one of our facilitators will be there for you and will take care of you for as long as you need assistance.
What You Might Experience
First of all, try to forget anything you’ve heard about ayahuasca. It probably won’t be anything like what you expect! Ayahuasca will work with you personally, offering you a tailor-made experience, so your ceremonies will most likely be very different from those of your fellow participants. However, there are some good things to know that can help you navigate the experience.
Visions
Visions are one of the most talked about effects of ayahuasca. But what does ”having a vision” even mean?
It can mean different things for everyone. For some it feels no different than using your imagination or visualizing during a meditation. For others, visions can be 3D, lifelike, incredibly vivid narrative images, witnessed in technicolor, movie-theater clarity. Sometimes they come in the form of geometrical shapes and patterns, or might be experienced as seeing spirits or other-worldly creatures, feeling all of your senses as heightened, seeing energy moving, or a dream-like state. Something that’s less well-known: those types of visions do not always happen, and they don't happen for everyone.
If you do get visions, they can be light and subtle, or they can be full-on, all encompassing. If the latter happens, it can be overwhelming, especially if it comes on fast. Remember to breathe. It will level out, and you will get used to it. If you need a facilitator, we will be there for you.
Visions are not the most important part of the experience, but they can bring insight, clarity, even amusement and fun. Ayahuasca has a great sense of humor! If you are experiencing visions, pay attention, but try not to analyze or interpret anything in the moment. Confusion is common and completely okay. You don’t need to remember everything you see; you’ll remember what you need to.
Emotional Release
Almost all of us have spent most, if not all, of our lives suppressing certain emotions. We judge some emotions as “good” (joy, happiness) and others as “bad” (anger, sadness). Our perspective at Sowa Charana is that there are no “bad” emotions. Every emotion has a purpose: anger helps us understand when someone has crossed a boundary; sadness helps us to make changes in our lives. For most of us, when an uncomfortable emotion begins to come up, we push it down, not wanting to feel it. These emotions are energy and they get stuck in our bodies.
One of the most common and powerful ways ayahuasca works is to bring up and amplify suppressed emotions in order for them to be felt and released. Therefore, it’s common to feel emotions like fear, anger, grief, sadness, and worry. These emotions are being brought up to make us aware that they are there and to allow us to feel them, process them, and let them move through our bodies. This process can be very cathartic as it allows us to release events and traumas from the past and anything that’s not serving us.
Ayahuasca is extremely good at bringing up emotions that have been trapped in our subconscious, where, if untended and unexplored, they can dictate our behavior in unhelpful ways and even make us quite sick. This can be an important part of healing with ayahuasca. We’ve seen working on emotions trapped in the unconscious be the key to guests overcoming so many conditions, physical and emotional. Therefore, in addition to the help you may receive in ceremony accessing and processing these kinds of emotions, we have various activities we encourage guests to participate in outside of ceremony to support this process.
Insight and Understanding
Drinking ayahuasca can also provide profound insights into one's life, health, and any problems, illnesses, or other issues that are being experienced. This often comes with an understanding of what needs to be changed in order to stop the problem from continuing. Understanding may come through altered thoughts, visions, a sense of communicating with an intelligent entity, or a spontaneous knowing that comes over you in a flash of sudden intuition.
Spiritual Connection
You might have a great connection with the spiritual world; or, maybe more likely, you are someone who reads the words “plant spirits” and thinks we’re nuts. Both are a perfectly fine starting point for working with ayahuasca!
Wherever you’re at, in ceremony you may experience a connection with a being sometimes referred to as “mother ayahuasca,” and/or with plant spirits, spirit guides, ancestors, or any other benevolent entities the curanderos call into the maloka. Our curanderos are making sure the ceremony (and retreat) space is clean and protected, that only well-intentioned spirits can enter our space. So, if you see anything scary, there are two things to remember: 1. It’s yours! 2. It’s on its way out.
Purging
Purging, or releasing anything that’s not serving you, can be an important part of the process. Purging is a physical release, but it can also feel visual, emotional, mental, and energetic. Although it doesn’t happen in every ceremony, or even to everyone, these are some common ways of purging:
Yawning
Coughing
Burping
Crying
Getting hot and sweaty
Shaking or twitching
Shouting
Shitting (purge from the bottom!)
Throwing up
Throwing up, especially in front of other people, is a common fear for first-time guests. However, purging on ayahuasca is a completely different experience from having the stomach flu. You might feel exactly what you are releasing as you purge, be it a painful memory, a toxic relationship, or an emotion that no longer serves you. This can be a moment of insight and a great, cathartic release. Sometimes the act of purging can launch you into the full psychedelia of the ayahuasca experience. Everyone has their own bucket next to their mat, and there are also buckets in the bathrooms in case you need to purge from both ends at the same time (it happens!).
Which brings us to another good rule of thumb: best not to trust a fart. By this we just mean be mindful of the fact that ayahuasca has a well-earned reputation for causing diarrhea. People tend to be overly worried about shitting themselves in ceremony and this rarely ever happens. Usually, you’ll get a fair warning and be able to make it to the bathroom, which we’d recommend you do in a timely fashion once ayahuasca has given you a nudge in that direction. The facilitators are happy to escort you to the bathrooms if you need a hand getting there.
“Nothing”
Something not many people talk about is that despite drinking this very strong psychedelic medicine, you might not feel anything at all during a given ceremony. Feeling that the ayahuasca is having no effect is a common experience, especially for someone’s first ceremony. But even when there are no obvious effects being felt at the time, that doesn't mean that nothing is happening or that the medicine is not working. Very often, the experience of “getting nothing” is the most effective way for the medicine to bring up repressed and challenging emotions around self-worth, control, and expectation. The intelligence of the medicine works in this way to allow the participant to feel and process these emotions. We’ve seen this happen quite a few times, and in almost every single instance, the ayahuasca is working to bring up specific emotions in a unexpected way.
Sometimes, it can take a few ceremonies to feel a strong connection with the medicine, which often eases the participant into the experience gently. A history of heavy marijuana use can sometimes block someone from having a strong experience with the medicine, which is why we recommend discontinuing use for a few months before your first ceremony.
A very quiet or uneventful ceremony may also commonly follow a very intense ceremony, as the body and mind continue to integrate the strong experiences of a couple nights prior. A weird one that also happens from time to time: someone can have a sense of 'not feeling anything' even if they are actually feeling the medicine very strongly.
Because the medicine works so deeply on the subconscious and unconscious minds, profound changes can happen after a ceremony even when it seems like nothing has happened. It is good to be aware that, although we always do our best to get everyone to 'feel the medicine', it is the plant that ultimately decides what the participant will experience, and it is very possible that one or more ceremonies may feel uneventful.
Challenging Ceremonies
Ayahuasca is a very powerful medicine and sometimes working with it can be quite intense. As you might have heard, ceremonies are not always easy. Sometimes they are fun, beautiful, revelatory, and transcendent; other times they are seriously hard work. You may be confronted with your biggest fears, deeply suppressed emotions, or past traumas, or you may have long nights of uncomfortable purging and physical release.
The medicine brings these things up for us to see, release, and heal, and often the more challenging ceremonies are the most healing and the most rewarding in the long-term. For this reason, as far as we’re concerned, we agree with physician and addiction expert Gabor Maté that, “There is no such thing as a bad trip, only challenging ones.” Yes, there may be challenging nights, but those are the nights when the most work gets done; those are the nights you work on the things you came to work on.
If the medicine does become too intense or overwhelming at any time, our facilitators and curanderos are always available to assist you through a challenging period, so do not hesitate to ask for help if you need it!
Ceremony Rules & Agreements
We have rules in place to ensure everyone's safety and comfort. These rules are essential to creating the best possible environment for the healing and wellbeing of all. Please be aware that we take these rules very seriously and that anyone found in violation any of the rules may be refused ayahuasca or asked to leave the retreat.
Remain on your designated bed throughout the ceremony (with the exception of bathroom trips, taking a break outside to recenter, etc.). Do not enter into anyone else's space or sit on someone else's bed during ceremony. It is important that each participant remains in their own space throughout the ceremony for the most productive healing experience. You will be asked to sit separately from your partner/friend/family member.
Don't try to help other participants if they seem to be having a difficult time, in or out of ceremony. This is what the facilitators and curanderos are here for. Leave it to the professionals. Often it can look like someone is having difficulties when they are actually having a very beneficial experience. It can be shocking for someone who is deeply in their experience to have another person trying to interact with them. Please stay in your own space without engaging with others during ceremony. In the case of couples/friends/family members, if we determine at any time that someone will benefit from the presence of a person they know, we will advise you.
Stay inside or close to the ceremony space at all times during the ceremony. You may need to go outside to use the bathroom, or you might like to sit outside for a short break, but please remain on your bed for most of the ceremony. Do not go outside of the designated outdoor space. After the ceremony, if you are still feeling the effects of the ayahuasca, please remain in the ceremony space until you are no longer feeling the effects of the medicine.
During the ceremony, you may wish to express yourself through singing, dancing or other movements. This is fine, but please remain on your bed and keep the noise level low. It is okay to sing to yourself if you must, but please don’t sing louder than the curanderos. If you are being too loud and therefore distracting other guests, we will ask you to keep it down. Please make sure that any physical movements are made away from other participants and that you do not enter their space.
Be careful with lights during the ceremony as these can be very dazzling to those under the effects of ayahuasca and can be distracting for the curanderos. All of our facilitators have small lights to guide you to and from the bathrooms and to find anything you might need in your space, so please ask them for help with this rather than indiscriminately shining a bright light around. Dimly lit flashlights are much preferred to super bright ones during the ceremony; if you don’t have one, one of the facilitators will be happy to help.
Do not make sexual advances, flirt, or engage in any kind of sexually suggestive behavior with other participants, facilitators, or curanderos. Along with the dieta restrictions, the retreat and ceremonies can be a very vulnerable time where patterns and issues around relationships and sexuality are being explored for healing. Engaging in any kind of sexual behavior or relationship can be very harmful to this process. If a genuine connection is made with someone, please wait until after the retreat to pursue this. Persistent flirting, advances, or otherwise sexually suggestive behavior will be taken very seriously and will result in the person being asked to leave the retreat.
