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Tierra Vida – An Ayahuasca Journey

By Gregon

Graham Hancock has posted a short documentary (25 mins) regarding the ayahuasca experience to his YouTube account which is well worth a look. Created by by Alexander G. Ward as a testimonial to his own shamanic trip at the Tierra Vida Ayahuasca retreat in Pucallpa, Peru, it acts as a decent primer on the topic, giving an introduction to the ayahuasca brew, the process of its creation, footage of an actual ayahuasca ceremony and and a detailed account of the psychedelic experience:

On a related note, Graham has also recently posted another video interview by Sonia Doubell, this time with anthropologist/ayahuasca researcher Luis Eduardo Luna.

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
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9 Comments

    1. Six of the Best
      [quote=Serpentharper]I’m off to Peru in 10 days time for 6 ayahuasca ceremonies, wish me luck![/quote]

      Nice! Do report back to us with a blog entry or something as to your experiences/learning, okay?

  2. Hi Greg I’m back from my

    Hi Greg I’m back from my ayahuasca retreat in Peru and thought I’d let you know how I got on. I went with Ayahuasca Satsangha. They are very serious people, into the work of expanding your consciousness.  Its a very hard retreat not ayahuasca tourism in any way. They are not interested in money,  it’s a donation based retreat. The retreat is in a beautiful mountain lodge high in the Andes near Huaraz.
    They recognize that eastern knowledge is very complementary to ayahuasca so daily yoga, qui gong,  meditation and pranayama and satsang are given, also Ayurvedic consultation and consultation with the curandero.
    We did 7 ayahuasca ceremonies in 9 days plus a week long dietas. This is very hard, most places give you a day between ceremonies and don’t do the diet. The diet is very important. To become a curandero  a person must do multiple diets for extended periods in isolation. Its the original diet of the forest before spices, sugar ect.  Our diet consisted first of drinking tree bark tea twice a day. The trees are the biggest spirits in the forest and provide protection during and after the ceremonies. They clear your system and make it a hospitable place for Ayahuasca to live. You only eat breakfast and lunch, the food is totally bland, boiled yuca, brown rice ect, no salt, spices, sugar. It’s very hard to eat. During the diet you can’t use soap, shampoo or toothpaste, touch another person or leave the retreat. It’s quite a commitment because there are strict pre and post dietary restrictions. Before diet for two weeks, no sex(including masturbation), no alcohol, no pork, no medication, no street drugs. Same applies during the retreat. After diet it’s one month no alcohol, sex ect plus no pork or duck for 6 months. If you think you can’t stick with this it’s best not to do it. If you stick with it Ayahasca can stay with you for years and wonderful things will happen in your life, if you break the restrictions the opposite might occur. 
    The  ceremonies started when it was dark, about 7pm. You all sit in a
    circle facing the curandero and the mesa( collection of objects like jaguar
    skull crystals shells condor feathers ect). You have a mattress, blankets and
    pillow. A water bottle to rinse your mouth(you can’t swallow) a bowl to vomit
    in and toilet paper if you have to shit. Both of these scenarios are likely,
    possibly at the same time! Everything is in darkness, you can smoke tobacco as Ayahuasca like it. You all drink from the same cup. The shaman sings an Icaros for the person, you go up put your intention into the cup, say Salud and drink.
    The first time you drink it tastes fine, but the more you take it the worse it
    gets, by the last ceremony I was vomiting before I took it:) After drinking its
    best to sit up for as long as possible so she can move up the spine. She travels
    the same way as kundalini through the nadis and chakras, she’s really like plant
    kundalini. After about 20 minutes you start to feel drunk. Your mind is crystal
    clear but your body is drunk do you lie down. It’s different for everyone but
    with me she would come up from my feet as swirling cold energy ,
    through my body straight to the third eye an crown, then the DMT would slam into the pineal and the visions would start. They started with seeing snakes coming towards me, swimming into my brain. I saw snakes at the molecular level and felt the presence of huge boas. Then i saw in brilliant colours ancient temples and pyramids and faces of incas, mayans and toltecs. Normally the visions are in the dark with closed eyes. But when I went to the toilet i had the light on and there were snakes flying all around me. The first time was very nice, it’s like Ayahuasca is saying hello, look how amazing I am. The second time she started to go to work healing me and ths was undoubtedly the most terrifying experience of my life. The Aya was very strong and it hit fast, I was taken basically to the
    godhead, a place of unimaginable power, vastness, smallness, intelligence beyond description or comprehension. I didn’t think I’d come back with my sanity intact, I didn’t know if I’d come back at all, this was the point of ego
    annialation but I wasn’t ready. At the same time I was shaking and twitching
    like I was poisoned and Aya decided to purge me. I vomited for about three hours which is amazing since I had hardly eaten. It’s quite funny( though not at the time!) because Aya changes your spatial recognition so that although your bowl is right beside you when you go to get it it’s miles away. When you finally get it it’s grown so big you can barely get your arms round it, and it has a tunnel inside it! I have to say its the best puke you’ll ever have, what comes out is vile bitter and evil. You are basically vomiting emotions, all your hatreds,
    jealousies, hang ups, all your life’s negativity comes out, and despite, the
    shaking, the hallucinations, the nausea you find yourself saying thank you over
    and over. That night I thought I could never take  Aya again I was so scared but the next day I felt amazing, brand new and in retrospect it was my best night.
    The other ceremonies were easy after that. Ayahuasca herself appeared to me, also Shiva and Ganesh. Ganesh put me on his back and I rode him as he removed all obstacles from my path. After a few hours you start to come out of mariado. Then we would drink a fresh coconut which would taste divine and listen and sing to mantras and talk about our experiences. The sacred power of mantra becomes incredibly apparent under ayahuasca, the holiness goes right through you.
    Whilst everyone talks about the visions they are not the most important
    thing, it’s the incredible healing that occurs that is paramount. I lost all my
    fears and 4 kilos, I feel scrubbed clean emotionally, physically and
    spiritually, I am brand new! I will definitely go again I can’t recommend Ayahuasca Satsangha highly enough.

      1. Yes, most people want to go
        Yes, most people want to go back. Two of the group could not get mariado. Sometimes it takes more ceremonies, if you have a lot of emotional blockages ect. You keep dieting and taking Ayahasca and eventually you are cleaned out enough or her to work her magic. These people have decided to stay on for another month or so as they realize they need healing. Everyone got something different but everyone was delighted by the journey.

    2. Thanks
      [quote=Serpentharper]Hi Greg I’m back from my ayahuasca retreat in Peru and thought I’d let you know how I got on. [/quote]

      Thank you so much for sharing this with us. Great to hear personal experiences from the Grail crew.

      Though I agree the healing is paramount, I’d be stoked if you could share a little more about your visions/sensations, as this is a topic that I research quite a bit (ie. phenomenology of altered states).

      1. OK Greg, visions! I should
        OK Greg, visions! I should say first that I have an awakened kundalini and this certainly effected my ayahuasca experience, as it allowed ayahuasca to go straight to my third eye and crown chakras. Well as I said the first time started with snakes coming towards me, this I could see with my eyes closed in the forehead third eye region, this is where all my closed eye visions occurred. Initially it was almost just a sense of them but quickly them became clearer. When I saw boa constrictors, one of her favourite manifestations, the colours were stunning I particularly remember bright yellow. I never saw the entire boa, just mid – sections, sometimes there a ‘sense’ that the boas were huge. These boas had a suoernatural feel to them, not like ‘real’ boas. However, the I snakes I saw when I went to the toilet were stunning because they were not phycedelic in any way, they were brown, a bit like adders and about the same size, basically they looked like real snakes, except they were flying around me fast in a circular motion. There is a clip on you tube from the film Blueberry, in the clip the man takes ayahuasca for the first time and there are snakes, these snakes are virtually identical to what I saw, so watch that and you’ll have an idea. I don’t really view anything I saw under Ayahuasca as in any way illusory, I think she shows us a reality that normally we can’t tune in to. I read about a woman who when taking San Pedro, saw a stairway of light going up a mountain. The shaman could see it too and told her to take a photo, she did, and it came out! I think my bathroom snakes would also have come out on film. I didnt have any more open eyed visions as the ayahuasca made me very drunk and I was out of it most of the time but some of the others where shown interesting things. One girl saw the shaman turn into a jaguar and another saw everyone’s chakras lit up. Interestingly though, there were two people who weren’t mariado and their chakras were not lit up.
        With closed eyes I had some stunning experiences, one time when the Aya hit my my third eye I could see it opening, the colour was stunning blue, it opened like a sort of flower/vortex. Then I was taken inside my pineal gland, it was like entering a blue pine cone of light, the size of Notre Dame cathedral. In another vision I saw the face of a woman, her right eye became an orb of white light which grew very big and sent a beam of light into my third eye. Then I was shown the ascension of the soul. I saw a human body made of blue light lying face up on a surface. It was in a sort of tube made up of rings of white light. It then moved upwards and the tube of rings of white light extended up indefinitely. The blue soul travelled up to higher levels through this tube. I felt I was given profound insight as to the nature of our spirit in these ceremony. In another ceremony an oriental warrior came. He was mostly made of gems of green light. I couldn’t see too many details, sometimes there is a quality of dark light with the ayahuasca visions. He gave me a sword, I didn’t want it saying I wasn’t violent, but the spirits insisted and unseen hands strapped it firmly to my body. The blade was made of green light. Later I was t use it to rid myself of an unwanted presence, I think it was also the sword that destroys ignorance. In the same dark light Ganesh came as a jeweled elephant. Shiva was felt as an indescribable blue power. Once Ayahuasca also came, she was a green woman, her arms and fingers extended in green vine like tendrils and carresed my face, I heard her calling my name. I was shown a pyramid, the top of which lifted off and a light shone to the cardinal points. Then I was moving through a purple universe with many objects flying by. I was shone many carvings of old temples and faces of Aztecs and incas. I feels that Aya was trying to show me something important about our origins on the planet.
        With regard to your interest in visions I can also share with you two experiences which came through kundalini which were very important to me, I won’t say they were life changing as I always felt that the world was enchanted but they did confirm experientaly what I had only sensed before. The first event happened about three years ago, one year after kundalini awakening. It was night and I was standing outside in my field in awe of the wonder of the night sky. I was feeling some doubts about my kundalini was it real ect ect. Spontaneously I uttered that classic cliche, ‘ give me a sign’. Immediately under a tree to my left a ball of fire/ light began to manifest out of thin air. It was about 2 meters in the air, not in the sky. It grew to be about a meter or more wide, it was huge! The light was of an indescribably beautiful quality. The inside had a fiery quality, it was in constant movement. This was surrounded by a thick band of red/ orange light, which looked a bit like magic marker. The ball then moved across the field in front of me travelling to a tree on the opposite side. It did this quite slowly so I could see clearly. As it did so it left a tale like a comet. The the point of the tail remained where the light had started and spanned the entire length of the field. It was was made of the magic marker type light. When the light reached the other side of the field it curved up in a joyous manner, held for a second then vanished. To give you and idea of scale, the next day, I measured the distance between the two trees which was 150 meters. So you can imagine the scene, me, standing in a field looking at a giant cosmic fireball with a tail 150 meters long that’s just materialized out of thin air! I should say that I can’t convey the supernatural/ divine quality of the light, ball lightening is not an option! You know in a cartoon, when the cartoonists hand comes in and draws something that’s not supposed to be there, well this was like that, it was like a divine hand came in and drew it on with a very ‘magic’ marker. That night and for the next 3 days my kundalini became incredibly strong like it was moving up a level. I was not on any drug or even in an altered state of consciousness when this happened, I had not even been meditating, my ayahuasca visions pale in comparison to this. For a couple of days after I would see tennis ball sized white lights like mini comets flying into trees.
        The second event was two years ago on the 21 st of December, the winter solstice, there was a lunar eclipse that night. I woke up at about 4am and knew immediately that there was a presence above me, I could feel its weight on my aura. It seemed to be waiting for me to acknowledge it was there. I know it sounds stupid but I said, Oh Hello! Straight away it entered my body from the left hand side. It was thick and viscous, and a little sore, it penetrated right into my muscles. It took about 20 minutes to infuse me. It was silvery, like mercury, it felt like the moon had melted into me. It felt incredibly loving, beautiful and magical. I then had a week of incredibly powerful kundalini infusion. On Christmas day a purge came on. I was in bed for 24 hours purging whilst kundalini raced through me. This was not unlike an ayahuasca purge. It was not as intense but longer and gentler. I find the similarity between this experience and Aya very interesting. Aya moved through me as thick green light and purged me. This moved as thick silvery light and purged me. Both these incidents revealed to me an almost Tolkenesque magical aspect to the world.
        Anyway Greg, I hope this is of some use to you:)

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