Ayahuasca 03: “Please Mama Aya, Show Me How to Love Myself”
A serpent gutter in Pisac. In Peru, the serpent is one of three sacred spirit animals, believed to symbolize wisdom and knowledge. In the Andean Cosmovision, the serpent represents Ukhu Pacha, the “inner world”—an underworld realm of death, soil, composting, fertility, and new life. The serpent is also frequently described as “The Spirit of Ayahuasca.”
[This post is a continuation of Ayahuasca 02: The Set and Setting]
“SCHIK”
I hear a sound, and see an accompanying flash, puncturing the black silence of the maloka. A match has been struck, and suddenly a small fire is burning. The fire levitates, and begins floating to the center of the maloka. As it draws closer, I can now make out a silhouette—someone is carrying it there in a small pan, like a miniature wok. The pungent smell of Palo Santo suddenly wafts into my nostrils.
I close my eyes, and gripping my amethyst geode tightly with both hands, begin to repeat my intention in my head, like a mantra—a prayer to Mother Ayahuasca:
Please Mama Aya, show me how to love myself.
As I pray, I can feel the acidic, viscous elixir churning in my stomach, like a snake, writhing its way down, deeper and deeper into my intestines.
A few minutes pass, and I am hit with the first wave of nausea, jolting me out of my prayerful state. I swallow hard, knowing I need to keep the bitter brew in my stomach for at least thirty minutes to absorb the medicinal compounds, dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and beta-carbolines. My gut grows more restless, and I can hear the sludge slithering even further into my intestines, churning and gurgling. Unexpectedly, and without consulting my rational mind, my prayer morphs into a new intention:
Please Mother Ayahuasca, help me heal my gut.
Later in the evening, I would learn exactly why this shift occurred.
An hour passes
And I have successfully swallowed back every wave of nausea, but I am still not experiencing any visual effects. Just a continued gurgling in my belly. I remind myself that it is very common to not experience any psychedelic effects the first time taking ayahuasca, so I settle in for an uneventful evening, tuning in to the lullaby-esque quality of the Shaman’s voice as he sings his Icaros—the medicine songs used in healing ceremonies.
A shadow approaches my mat. “Jonathan, how are you feeling?” came a heavily-accented, but soothing whisper. It is the voice of the doctor, as she kneels next to my mat. “I don’t feel anything, no visions,” I reply.
“OK, drink your water. Like a lot. Like a liter.” I open my water and begin to drink, slowly at first, and then in bigger and bigger gulps, until I finish my first bottle. The doctor retreats into the pitch dark of the maloka.
My belly now full, I belch softly, once again tasting and smelling the ayahuasca tea. A faint, swirling Mandala geometry begins behind my eyelids. Opening my eyes, the overlay continues briefly, and then disappears. Closing my eyes again, it returns, and almost immediately I am hit with an intense wave of nausea.
I spring forward onto my hands and knees, kneeling over my bucket, in the “purge position,” like we were taught during our orientation. With hands on either side of the bucket, I peer down to ensure I am aiming true, but find a bottomless pit staring back.
The vomit comes in torrents, hard and fast. Once, twice, three times as the water I just consumed splashes loudly into the bucket. The swirling mandala overlay returns, stronger this time, radiating out from the center of the void before me, spinning into my periphery and causing me to feel dizzy. I cough the slime from my throat and spit in my bucket, tasting a diluted mixture of ayahuasca. The flavor inspires another two rounds of purging: my abs contracting violently against my viscera, as my whole body convulses to expel a thicker liquid this time, the last of the ayahuasca remaining in my stomach. I sit back onto my heels, and folding my arms across my ribcage, prod lightly up and down my torso, concerned that I may have cracked a rib. I have never thrown up this hard in my life.
A gentle hand
begins to rub my back, and another extends offering me some folded toilet paper from the roll I had set out. The nurse is next to me, asking if I’m OK. “Thank you” I say taking the tissue and wiping my mouth, spitting again into the bucket.
My body is telling me to go to the bathroom now, and I stand up. Off-balance, and taking the nurse’s hand, she guides me across the pitch dark maloka, and out the door into the cool evening. Now in the light, the visual effects fade quickly, and I am able to regain my composure traversing the 15-meter path to the toilets.
Finally in the bathroom—one of two open-air stalls, separated by a large piece of thin plywood—I sit down and wait. The gurgling in my belly continues, as the serpentine sludge continues to squirm in my bowels. But nothing is happening. It’s as if my body is trying to hold on to the dysbiotic mass in my gut.
I asked Mama Aya again:
Please, show me how to love myself
and this time, she responds:
How can you love yourself, if you’ve never even liked your own body? Never truly felt comfortable in your own skin? Your entire experience of life has been colored by this discomfort, ever since your youth. This is the first layer we must address before you can begin to love yourself.
…mother Ayahuasca seemed to say.
Like a dam breaking
A rush of repressed memories, visions, and felt sensations cascaded into my consciousness. A phantasmagoria of moments throughout my life:
There was me, at age 7, lost and scared, desperately trying to find the bathroom among the rows of endless, towering shelves in K-Mart. Until I can search no longer and am forced to suddenly pull my pants down to defecate in the middle of an aisle, to the shock and horror of other shoppers.
At age 8, needing to use so much toilet paper due to loose stool, that I clogged the toilet and, out of shame continued trying to flush until the commode overflowed and flooded the house.
Age 10, losing control of my bowels at my best friend’s birthday party, needing to be taken home by my friend’s mom in shame and embarrassment.
At 16, needing to sprint off the field during soccer practice to relieve myself in the woods.
Age 21, attempting to be intimate with my first-ever boyfriend—and feeling so much nervousness over my bowel irregularity, over what might happen, that I was rendered completely impotent, despite my desire for intimacy and love.
And in between all of these moments of shame, the near-constant worrying, clinching, and stress that came with trying to control my “visceral urges”—a painful and distracting scratch on the lens of my life that did not allow me to be fully present, ever—not in times of celebration and joy, not in moments of close connection with loved ones, not in the tender and formative years of my arrival to adulthood.
Mama Aya was right: for the majority of my life, discomfort from IBS has tormented and distracted me from the simple ethos of merely, as Ram Dass famously said, “be[ing] here now”—tainting my entire experience of this world.
Immediately, as if this insight was a lynchpin between my psyche and physical body, a second dam broke—my bowels releasing intensely. I spent the next 30 minutes on the toilet continuing to do so.
Returning to the maloka, I settle back in but my experience is over. I saw no more visions, nor felt any other affects from the medicine. Around midnight, I gather my things and leave the ceremony. The nurse ushers me to the dining room where they were serving a delicious and nourishing vegetarian soup.
The following morning
We had a group integration session mediated by the staff doctor, psychologist, coordinator, and the shaman, Maestro Pablo. One by one each participant shared their experience of the previous night. Most, like me, felt very little in the way of psychedelic effects.
When it was my turn, I decided not to share in any depth, and merely reported that the effects of the medicine were very light, other than the physical purging. The coordinator translated to Maestro Pablo in Spanish, and a discussion ensued between the four. Finally the psychologist turned to me and translated the shaman’s interpretation in English. “Jonathan, the maestro says the ayahuasca is going to work on your physical body, to clean you. The ayahuasca will begin working on your gut, which will be important in healing your mind as well. Tonight we will be increasing your dosage.”
I was stunned. In the last three years, we’ve seen a flood of research on the mind-body connection, particularly the gut-brain axis and, more specifically—the link between the gut microbiome and mental health disorders like depression and anxiety. But I could not believe this elderly medicine man from the jungle had any access to these research studies or news articles.
No, this wisdom existed in his tribe’s healing tradition, probably, for centuries before western medicine ever even began to hypothesize a mind-body connection.
After our sharing circle
The group piled into a van and we were carried to Cusco to volunteer at the Mother Teresa Shelter, a home for developmentally-challenged children and adults. Our group of 12 volunteers was there to play with the children, visit with the adults, and offer help to the nuns who run the shelter. This included such varied tasks as doing laundry, clipping finger and toe nails of residents, chopping veggies and chicken for a lunch stew, washing dishes, and spoon-feeding those who were unable to feed themselves.
Some of the scenes here were downright haunting. For instance, a moment when a paraplegic woman, heavily scar-tissued from head to toe from an apparent burn accident, sitting in her wheelchair in the baking hot sun, staring directly into the sun and wailing, long, guttural screams of agony. As I approached to see if I could help her, the screams of anguish intensified. I saw that where her eyes once were, two slits, oozing with fluid. Flies landed here and she tried, with her impaired hands to find her face and wave them away. Other residents rolled their eyes, and indicated that this was a near constant state of being for her, and the nuns all seemed to be too busy to help. I wanted to comfort her, but didn’t know if holding her hand would comfort her or terrify her further. As I stood there debating how to help, a nun beckoned me to the children’s ward to help get them ready for lunch.
The lasting takeaway from this volunteer experience was a sense of deep gratitude. My privilege in life had afforded me the option to come to Peru. The option to take jobs, and have experiences that, yes, ultimately led me to depression and a general dissatisfaction with life. These were not options afforded to the residents of the Mother Teresa Shelter, and yet, the faces here mostly wore smiles, and laughter was a much more common expression than anguish.
This was one of the most humbling things I have ever done. It filled me with gratitude for all the blessings in my life, and inspired me to make a commitment to do regular, hands-on volunteer work with the needy.
In the afternoon, our crew piled in to the vans and we traveled back to Taray, to prepare for our second ceremony, later that evening.
• • •
[As always, thank you so much for reading and sharing. More posts on ayahuasca are coming, next Thursday.]
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