Ada 0:00

Welcome to all things health and Abundance podcast. This is the podcast where we discuss different health and abundance related issues and come with real tips and advice. And today we're going to talk about ayahuasca. What is ayahuasca. What does a ceremony look like? How can one heal through the power of ayahuasca? This and much more is what will be discussing today. And today with me. Sofia Vassiliou, founder of The Awakened Potential. Sofia has an honours degree in ancient history. She holds a certifications in crystal therapy, Swedish massage and level three Reiki training. Sophia is a preferred psychic facilitator as well as a certified emotion called Empathy Cloud Practitioner. She helps her clients make significant shifts in how they see the world and how the world sees them. Sophia has completed a three year shamanic apprenticeship with an indigenous people shaman in the Peruvian Amazon. While working at the Ayahuasca Foundation, Sophia attained unique insights into the psycho spiritual connection to physical health, assisting people in the recovery from many issues such as addiction, trauma, allergies, and skin conditions. So, Sophia, I'm really happy to have you here with us today. I have myself been to some of the ceremonies, but I've never had the process of integration, the work of before and after the ceremonies, and I really feel that I've missed this integration process. So I'm really excited to be talking about this today. Thank you for accepting to be here today and talk about this.

Sophia 2:06

Well, thank you for having me here. I'm really looking forward to this chat as well.

Ada 2:12

Can you tell us about yourself, your journey and your work?

Sophia 2:16

So I am a holistic therapist. I have been working with people in various modes of alternative healing. Really since I was a child. I would work on my sister when she had a knee injury and I would be sort of surrounded by crystals. It's just always been inside me. I have training in various modalities, and my full time work now is mainly working with what I call epigenetic reprogramming, which is reprogramming the subconscious mind to let go of limiting beliefs and create the life that you want by understanding that you have much more agency in your life. Because when you believe certain things, that's the world you create and at. Gosh, when I was 20, no. 32, I was going through a bit of a crisis emotionally and mentally myself and sort of ayahuasca, which is something I wanted to do for a very long time, just sort of came on my radar really strongly. And I found a ceremony in the UK which I went to drink at for a weekend. It was 2 or 3 ceremonies. And I had some breakthroughs. I had some really interesting shifts and insights. And I realized I wanted to do it in an indigenous indigenous context. This felt like something was really not quite right for me in a certain way. And I'm still externally grateful for those ceremonies, because I did. The thing that it gave me was the courage to basically, you know, throw a hand grenade into my life and move to the Amazon. So it is courage. 1s Yes and no. Again, it's one of those integration 101 things where I would always suggest to people that they pause and take time to make massive, life altering decisions after drinking because you are still in a very open state where you might not be seeing things, you see some things extraordinarily clearly, and you might see other things with very jaded perception, where you feel like you have to just get rid of things instead of trying to fix them. And so I would always suggest people exercise caution, but then at the same time I was drinking, I drank in August and I didn't leave the country until December. And you went to Peru, to the Ayahuasca Foundation to do a six week retreat in the jungle, and I had no intention of learning. Part of that retreat was actually learning about Corinne Desmarais, learning the arts, of holding a ceremony and sort of really immersing it into that medicine paradigm. For me, I was just going it was the longest thing I could find, and I knew I needed a lot of help. And so I went there for six weeks, and the healing and the shifts that I went through in those six weeks, I was just so blown away. I felt like a new human and I decided to stay there. I got offered a job, and so I stayed at the center, working and facilitating other people's retreats and their journeys. And in that process, I was an interpreter for the Coronado, where he would talk about the mechanics of ceremony and the healing paradigm. We would administer many different medicines and different kinds of purgative, and sort of from the jungle pharmacy rather than the ayahuasca. So they weren't hallucinogenic, they were just there to clean out the body, mind and soul in many different ways. And I would also be sat next to the Coronado drinking every other night. And 1s this must have been quite a trunk. 1s Yeah, like six weeks at a time, ten week courses we would do. And then there were shorter healing retreats, which were sort of 2 or 3 weeks long, but it's an every other night drinking schedule. And I was there from 2015 to the end of 2017. 1s Then I came back. 1s Learn to couple of other modalities which really access the subconscious to rewire the brain in a slightly less intense way, which I find really useful for people's integration journeys, and just sort of helping people in a different way who can't access the jungle or it's not appropriate or combine the lessons you learn with ayahuasca. You know, sometimes you just learn the issue. So I struggle asking, asking for help. What I can do with my other healing tools is we can install a new belief. It's easy and joyful for me to ask for help. I understand that asking for help gives other people a gift because they can help me. Yeah, and so that's the kind of work I do outside of working with people to help them prepare for and integrate their ayahuasca journeys.

Ada 7:33

Wow, this is very interesting. Can you explain in simple terms what I asked I use and what I lost a ceremony looks like.

Sophia 7:41

So what ayahuasca is, is a combination usually of two plants. So you have the ayahuasca vine and a leaf called karuna. And when they combine together they create a brew that contains DMT, which is one of the strongest hallucinogenic substances or psychedelic substances on the planet, which we also create inside our bodies. The fusion of those two elements does is means that it's orally digestible. So normally if you have DMT and eat it, most many plants actually contain it. It would be broken down immediately by the stomach and do nothing. But when the ayahuasca vine is combined with the DMT plant, it actually stops those enzymes in the stomach breaking it down. And so you actually are able to slowly absorb this DMT and have a journey that lasts 4 to 6 hours. The only other way to take DMT is actually to smoke it which lasts 10 to 20 minutes. So that's the difference. It's a psychedelic brew that's used traditionally in the Amazon by many cultures across South America in different ways.

Ada 8:55

what does this ceremony look like?

Sophia 8:57

So because there's many different tribes that use ayahuasca, each ceremony style would be quite different. The paradigm in which I was trained is a Shapiro ceremony, and they live in sort of northern Peru, getting closer to the Colombian border and ceremonies with them are completely dark and pitch black once you've drunk your ayahuasca. And there's silence for a while until the effects of the medicine touch the shaman. Kundera would be a better word, actually, for the healers in the Amazon. Shaman is a word that comes from Siberia, but they prefer to be referred to as Kundera's.

Ada 9:39

Oh, wow. Okay, I wasn't aware of that. Interesting.

Sophia 9:41

Yeah, we've kind of transposed the word here to sort of cover all bases, and we use the word shamanism as a term. But yeah, it's not quite appropriate as it is a difficult word, but yeah, Kundera would be a better word. Yeah. And it also speaks to what they do. So when the effects of the medicine, as it's called in many circles, the effects of the ayahuasca touch the corona. So they start to sing and their songs are completely acapella. There's no instruments. Sometimes they'll have a rattle made of leaves to accompany them. Sometimes not. My shaman really didn't like using anything except his voice. And he'll be singing for a few hours. And what he's doing is initially his protecting the space and creating a container for the ceremony, and then all of his plant allies that he's spent a decade connecting with to get powers in the other realm where the journey of the ayahuasca takes place, those form energy lines through the body and give him strength in that world. And as he's. Getting high, for want of a better word. He then sends out those energy lines to the patients in the room who then are connected to him. And so the journey is a space in which everything happens with everyone connected to the shaman as an anchor point. And then from there, he's what he's singing is he's asking the plants to do things, but he's also narrating what they're doing and sort of commenting and then looking and to see what where an illness has started in somebody, and then he asks someone or something to clean it. And he's, he's sort of multitasking hardcore doing, you know, I've seen in ceremony him working on one person sort of you can see his energy body in front of one person and someone else at the same time and holding the entire space. It's a very strange space, but that's a traditional ceremony in Brazil. They're quite celebratory and people dance. There's also the Diame churches, where, you know, it's much more of a a religious looking ritual where, you know, the men and the women are separate in the space, and they drink and they dance and they pray, and it's a constant interaction for the whole night. So there's not one archetypal ceremony. And then you have all the Western stuff that happens now where people kind of gather and drink and sing nice songs and, you know, it's changing and it's evolving.

Wow. So no instruments. Actually, what I have tried in all the ceremonies has been that there were instruments, there was a lot of singing, and men and women were divided. So I had no knowledge of what you described right now. But it's amazing that actually that's only the shaman. He or she holds space for everyone, and there's so many things at the same time while singing for hours acapella, it's really amazing.

And so when they're gaining their powers and connecting with their plant allies in the other realm, it's a process called dieta or diet. And what often happens is they'll be given melodies. So that's one of the first ways the plant stuck to communicate with them is through these melodies. And so their songs, you know, the words change, but the melodies are really important, and they kind of shift the dimensions and energy in a room. And it's quite magical to watch. Wow. Amazing. Yeah, that's actually I can relate to the different melodies, and somehow it would feel like you are in a forest and then you're somewhere else, even though you are in a room.

Can relate to that. What do people usually see and experience in a ceremony?

I mean, that question is almost impossible to answer. It's so different for everybody I know, but I still felt that I had to ask this question for the person who has never been in the ceremony. So the archetypal thing that most people hear about is the visions. You know, what they see, and this sort of experience of being in other worlds and seeing cosmic things happening in other realms. It's quite rare, actually, that people see that. But also the other very famous thing that I Oscar does is it kind of takes you inwards and you kind of can see your life and how you've contributed to other people's pain or discomfort, or how your issues and you know, things that you're trying to work within ceremony. You kind of understand your part in them, other people's part in them, and sort of have this whole deconstruct of things coming up to let go of. For some people, it is a very visual experience. For me, it's not at all. I don't see anything ever. What happened in your case, it's usually it's really hard to describe. It's almost like a untuned TV set where you might have a sense of a shadow or something sort of underneath the fuzz on the screen. It's almost like that sort of I can tell some things around. So I normally have a lot of interaction with beings. But again, I was drinking primarily in the Amazon and so I was surrounded by the jungle, my crew. And so we were learning to actually connect and have our own deities and our own relationships with the plants. And so they would often be in ceremony with me and they'd be talking or, you know, it was more a verbal thing or a sensation thing. You know, you start to feel something in your body and you go in and you say, okay, what is this about? And then all these thoughts. So it's very similar to the experience of the channeling information or just things coming to you with a slightly external voice, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes total sense. Is it possible for someone to have both? Yeah, yeah. Many people have sort of, you know, different kinds of experience and many people have different experience in different ceremonies. You know, one can be really, really visual and quite, you know, you know, like movies playing in front of them. And then the next one, they're sort of really in their body, you know, bringing up stuff that's been stuck in the cells ready to release with the famous kind of purging, which is usually vomiting or going to the bathroom. What experiences did you have? U1

Actually, both. I remember that in my very first ceremony, well, I saw a dragon and I became the dragons, a lot of things. And then I need to go to the toilet. I've never purged like I've never been throwing up. But I have to go to the toilet. And I was hearing, asked for help and I was thinking, no, no, no, no, I can't ask for help to go to the toilet. Maybe I can crawl there. As if that was less humiliating in my head. So actually crawling into the toilet was less humiliating than asking for help for me. So I'm still working. After quite some years. I'm still working with asking for help, but I became aware of it. How difficult it is for me to ask for help, but I think it has been both also been in my body, but also just. Actually not remembering anything, but just having this feeling of happiness. So I've had different experiences, very different from each other. I remember after my first time it was quite easy in comparison to what was expected. So I thought, oh, that's it, but this is easy. So I went quite with an ego, probably to the next one, and it wasn't as easy. So I think I had different experiences to the point that I thought I was dying. Yeah. It has always been different, like you said, but usually it brings up all the issues. Maybe you don't know about it, uncovers them, or issues you're working with. At least that's my experience.

Yes. And, you know, it's a good observation for you to see about the lesson about asking for help. That is, you know, the way we behave in ceremony when faced with certain really difficult points is a teaching that goes beyond what's happening in that room on that weekend or on that night. I think that's really important to understand about the process of drinking ayahuasca is that it's not just about what's happening there, it's about how you then use that information and choose to integrate it and learn from it, which gives you the gold which to give you the benefit.

But it's amazing that things actually can come up. A lot of things. After the ceremony, things kept coming up even three, four months after. It's really amazing.

Have you heard of Gabor Mattu?

Yeah, I've heard of him. Like, I've. I've checked some stuff on YouTube

So there's a famous quote from him, which is the work of the ceremony starts afterwards. And if you don't do that, you know you've wasted your time. It's very bad paraphrasing, but he says the entire work of the ceremony is actually the aftermath.

I am so happy I know about that now. So next time I know where to go. So basically to you to integrate that. So I don't like this next question, but I think I have to ask it, how is it different from different psychedelics and why I don't like it is that I don't consider you as a psychedelic, even though there is DMT connected to it or released in the body. I don't consider it psychedelic, but I believe I have to ask this question nevertheless for people that have never tried it.

Yeah, and I completely agree with you. It's a question that needs asking and addressing for sure, and I think the answer really depends on your worldviews in a way. So for me, psychedelic substances, you know, traditionally LSD, magic mushrooms, those kind of things, there's it's really hard to describe to me. I was and mushrooms are closer on a category than synthetics, for a start. I think the historical context in which I ask has been used, the fact that it was done in ceremony and there's evidence for it being done for thousands of years. You know, I think at least a thousand BC is some of the oldest paraphernalia for ayahuasca that they found, and it might be further back than that in the Amazon. I think that creates a container, you know, it's like a collective consciousness around what ayahuasca is and how it's used. That sort of. Yeah, it's like an intangible thing that exists in its own right. And then psychedelics, you know, the purpose of psychedelics for most people is to get out of your head. You know, explore other realms and go into this sort of, you know, fun land. And not everyone uses them like that. But that's, you know, there's this sort of flippant usage is quite common. Whereas something like ayahuasca and for me, magic mushrooms as well, there's this sacredness, there's this intentionality of going internally. And really, you know, I think one fear that a lot of my clients have is if they've had experience with something like mushrooms or acid, they're worried that they're going to wander off during ceremony and just want to explore the natural world. And I said, you don't have to worry about that. I will just put on your mat. You are forced into this process. You will go inside. You'll not be thinking in the slightest of disappearing anyway. You're just kind of nailed to your mat. Yes. Doing your thing. 2s True. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's just this entirely different experience where you're just so, you know, even if you're exploring the cosmos, it's like such an internal journey. And it's it's fascinating really, how it works. It's not that you can't use your legs, although many people struggle with being able to move sort of coherently and but yeah, it's it's just very different. And I think the next element where sort of synthetics versus natural substances that cause visions, visionary substances will go them. You know, the fact that we're talking we're communicating with spirits. And for me, that is something that I've seen a lot of skeptics drink ayahuasca. And by the end of a six week retreat that like, I kind of believe in the spirits, too, because I've seen them and spoken to them. So I think that's another aspect of this particular plant brew that we need addressing in people's psyches, that we are communing with other intelligences of another frequency and that needs respect.

Yeah. Totally agree. Thank you so much for the description. Are there any risks connected to it?

Yes. People should always go somewhere with the person giving you the eye mask. It gives you a really good sort of basic health checkup in terms of mental health issues in your family, going back a few generations for sure. Know people with a history of schizophrenia or other mental disorders in the family. It's very inadvisable to drink because if there are weaknesses in the psyche, drinking ayahuasca can just blast it open and people can have psychotic breaks. If you're going somewhere and they're not giving you a health check up, checking what medications you're on because it's an MRI, which that's the inhibitor in the stomach that stops the DMT being broken down, but that also stops other things happening. So if you're on antidepressants like Prozac or things like that, you can have a really adverse reaction. Also checking what's in the brew because other people can add other substances. Tobacco is quite common because there's a tobacco in the jungle that's wild causes a much more elevated heart rate. And so the risks for people who have heart conditions. Would be much higher if there's tobacco in the brew. People add other substances which have more D.E.A. one being bruggeman, and that can cause proper hallucinations rather than visions. And that can be a very difficult. I mean, people love those ceremonies because the medicine is so strong, but it's also a much higher risk in terms of the sort of possibility of a psychotic break or other mental breakdown after the ceremony. So, yeah, there's it's not a game. No, no. And I, I guess or I actually believe it is not advised to do it with someone that is not experienced with without a Kuranda. So just a group of friends taking the plant, taking the medicine. And this is another massive controversial issue with the fact that I, Oskar, is spreading rapidly throughout the world like the vine that she is. Yeah. 1s So, you know, there's a lot of ways that you can protect yourself, you know, checking out what training the people have, who are serving it to you and things like that, just to make sure that they know what's happening in the space. We had a saying in the jungle, you know, it's okay until it's not. And, you know, you could do ten ceremonies. It's fine. You're singing your, you know, healing or medicine songs, but you're not in control of the space. You're not able to actually see what's happening. You're not able, you know, you might not have. You might be drinking in a place where the land spirits are particularly ferocious, and they're really angry that you've bought a non-native. Something happening in the space. There's nothing to do with the ceremony that just causes chaos, that you just don't know. And if the person serving the medicine can't see that and control it, it's a 95% of the time for something like that won't happen. But when it does, no one knows what's wrong. U2

What could happen then?

I mean, you know, it could be just everyone in the ceremony, you know, purging for hours. I've seen. Wow. Not to get too freaky about it, but, you know, if there's entities or other kind of spirit beings being released from a patient and it's not controlled, that can just go and affect all of the other patients in the room. And so during whilst they're under the effects of the ayahuasca, you know, pretty much lose their minds, you know, just be screaming and crying and in these crazy actually just seemingly crazy and it wears off. And then sometimes there's After Effects to that. Some of my integration people, even when they were drinking with shamans from Colombia, something escaped in the room. Or they actually the person I'm thinking of had a very traumatic memory come up during the ceremony. And it was from the very early childhood and they didn't have enough support coming to terms with that. And actually, when I saw them a couple of weeks later, you know, they'd got to the point where they couldn't think straight. They were losing their memory. They were unable to really function very easily. What I saw is, you know, their spirit was know halfway out their body, like, you know, they're dissociated during the memory and never really came back. Wow. And so, you know, we did one session and got her back in her body and then her memory came back and she was able to function and she was whole again. And we worked a couple of times after that just to process the experience. But these things can happen.

So it's really important to go to a ceremony with someone who knows how to hold space. It's not just about the amount of ceremonies this person has been holding,

in my opinion. Yes, I'm sure other people would disagree, but in my opinion, yes, that's. Proper training, proper understanding of the forces with which you're playing and in, you know, you're in their space. It's a little bit like going under the sea to a journey. You know, you're in a different environment. You need to respect the environment that you're in.

Yeah, I totally agree. And how does the healing happen and on what level is it? Is it physical, mental, spiritual?

Again, this would depend on the paradigm that you're drinking in. So for the ship, both the ayahuasca and the ceremonies, just one part of an entire medicinal paradigm, which is mainly about physical health for them. So they will drink, they will see what's going on in their patients. And the ceremony for them is almost like doing x rays. And as I said, they'll be directing the plant spirits to clean out usually repetitive thoughts and sort of head spirals and sort of they'll see in that kind of x ray scan that like, oh, the beginning of your issue of your physical health started there. The plants will give them recipes of medicines they need to make, and then they'll be in treatment for a number of days or weeks where they'll get medicines made from plants in the jungle, maybe sort of steam sauna type things or compresses. And so it's, you know, physical health that they're mainly dealing with understanding that there are psychological or emotional reasons that also underlie it 1s in other contexts. Sort of most people in the West drink because they want sort of this idea of spiritual openings or emotional healing, and that's about their own personal journeys on the mat, which you know, are massive, going in with intentions for your own understanding, sort of the way I coach people for preparation is, you know, try and ask the right questions. You know, like asking like, help me see how I sabotage myself in my life or help me understand why I can't. Complete X or, you know, you're sort of asking for a dialogue and sort of trying to see your blocks or how you've contributed to whatever. So we sort of shifted the because it's about us and our journeys, rather than going to somebody for help for an issue. We've shifted the focus of the ceremony and which is fine. I think it's a beautiful way that we're learning to work with these altered states and get advice from beings who see things very differently to us. I don't know if that answered your question.

Yeah, yeah it does. So you can actually ask the medicine beforehand to show you certain things. So kind of make a plan of what you want to experience or what you want to get answers about.

So I normally suggest that people, especially the week leading up to the ceremony, start to disconnect from the outside stuff and start to go within. And in that time, really consider what why are you drinking? What do you want to get out of the ceremony? What for what reason are you undertaking this spiritual journey? And I'm really start to kind of go inwards and understand that. And then you know from your why you can get to a place of, okay, so if that's what I want overall, what questions could I ask that will help me get closer to that goal of understanding?

I understand. I don't think I have quite done that work beforehand. I was just saying that I'm open to whatever I need to know. I was scared of a certain trauma, of drowning that I experienced when I was around four years old. So somehow deep down, I was asking not to experience that. And so far I haven't. So she has been really gentle, I think, but I've always run in with a fear of experiencing it, to be honest. But probably she would just show you what you can handle, right? So if I'm not ready to handle it, then most of the time, okay, but not always.

Most of the time, yes. I mean, there is a lot of trust in the space, you know, and but there's also this idea that, you know, everything's perfect and it's always right and exactly what you need. And I think that's quite a dangerous mindset because sometimes, as I said, things happen that are completely not to do with you and your journey in a space, and it's just stuff at play. And just to say, oh, everything's perfect, exactly what you need. You know, ten people in the ceremony lost their minds and that's fine. So there's most of the time, you know, the way it happens and what unfolds is perfectly just for you. And the way it works is for you. And there also needs to be acknowledgement that sometimes things happen that were too much, that know. One thing I say to people is you can talk to her in the ceremony if things are happening too fast or they're too intense, you can say, hey, hang on, I'm just human. Please slow down. You know, it's my blog. It's actually a co-created space. It's your you're interacting with a being. And this is why, for me, that paradigm is so important because many people think they're just a passive recipient of the of the ceremony. It's just it's just what happens. But actually when you engage, when you start to realize that you have agency in that space, you can work with it and transform it. You're like, whoa, that's too much, or hang on, I didn't get that. Can we go back? Can you show me a different way?

Communication. Yeah,

it's a dialogue. It's a conversation.

I remember actually saying a couple of times, okay, this is too much. Can you please slow down? And. Yeah, she really takes it easier now. It's coming back to me. I haven't done it in a couple of years, so it was a bit of a distant memory. But yeah, that's true. Makes sense. So this is how someone prepares for it. But how can one integrate the learnings?

Afterwards. So for me, one of the most important tools for integration is writing down a lot of the stuff whilst you're still in the space or in the retreat space in which you drank the ayahuasca in the first place, because it has a very dreamlike quality. There are some things that will stick in your mind really strongly from the ceremony and other things that sort of like the details, or just like small insights or remembering or just like AHAs, that within a few days you'll probably forget if you haven't written them down like a dream, very much like a dream. And so if you're out of that space, just like a dream, you know when you have a dream journal and you write in bed, still lying down with your eyes shut, you remember way more than if you've actually moved, because you're still closer to that liminal, liminal state. And so when you take yourself out of the ceremony environment, the details fall away faster. So the first thing I recommend to do is journal or voice note or something to get your thoughts down whilst you're still very much connected to the space, because that will be a really good reference for you later on down the journey. Like you said, 2 or 3 months later, you're still getting insights, but you could also be in a more tricky place in your integration process. So the first thing is sort of making even just bullet points of your top ten insights from the ceremony would be great if you can't, if you don't like doing sort of long form writing, but just bullet points and having them around you as a memory, like just on the fridge to remind you of what you went through, I think could be really helpful because I'm not sure if you experienced this, but for many people I was. Here is a very peak experience. You feel open. You're in this group environment where everyone's really loving and connected, and you feel amazing because your heard your scene, you've opened it up and felt things in a way that you haven't felt before. And you're just like, yes. This is beautiful. This is what life's about. And then you go home. And no one's changed in your normal environment. Yeah, for a week. And no one knows that you've had this sort of, like, exponential growth happening. And so they're talking to you about the latest soap or celebrity or the weather and you're like, huh? And it can be a really big crash landing for some people if they're not ready. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. So having those reminders, having that sort of sense of, oh this I did experience that can be really, really important because you can feel like everything's just washing off you for the first week or two whilst the experience is still really fresh and you've got that glow in your chest, and then it's like four weeks later when so the 4 to 6 week period, the brain stops being so plastic. So as you're in ceremony, the the nerve pathways shift and change are actually able to sort of re perceive things and create new possibilities of thought. And that that's called neuroplasticity. And that continues for 4 to 6 weeks after the ceremony. So if you're practicing your new insights, if you're actually remembering the ways you thought during the ceremony, and sort of if you imagine you're walking in a forest pathway like in the ceremony, you cut the pathway. If you keep treading that pathway for the next four weeks, that's more likely to stay open than if you just make the pathway and then go and walk somewhere else where the tree is then overgrown. Practicing your insights. Doing things differently. Just even remembering the feelings and meditating on what you felt and experienced in those 4 to 6 weeks, you will cement those pathways so they become more permanent roads. And that is really important. And then after that is when I call it, the afterglow kind of drops and you start to feel like, oh, you know, everything gets that gray tinge again. You kind of go back into the old ways of thinking, of feeling, especially if you haven't done this practice. And for many people, you know, that journey from being in this wonderful, open, glorious space back into normal, or the reason why they went to drink in the first place, which might have been depressed or feeling broken. And it's quite common thing that people say they just felt broken and it's their last hope. The journey back into that can be such a dramatic crash that people really think they're broken, and it's completely hopeless. They end up having two choices. One is which drink again. And so some people end up on this roundabout of every two months going to a ceremony so they can feel good and then crashing or, you know, and that's not healthy or helpful.

Yeah, I've seen that.

Yes. And knowing about this pathway, first of all this journey that you go on is really important. But understanding that you're not broken, it's actually this is where homework time kicks in. How do I bring that feeling into my everyday life. And it's it's not even about the feeling like what changes do I need to make in my day to day to allow myself to be healed, to understand and actually use the things that I learned and make changes? It's about change. Rather than just seeing things, feeling them, and then crashing back and letting things be exactly as they are. Yeah, and there's two reasons why that's important. One of them, you know, it's for sustainability. I was here is an infinite. And the rate in which it's being used as an issue. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah. Having to go you there's places now on the planet where they're growing it out of the jungle, like Australia, South Africa, possibly even the Netherlands. But yeah, there's I was the farms around, but in the jungle, you know, there's armed guards around places where people are trying to plant ayahuasca and, you know, the thick of the vine, which means older the, the more valuable it is. And so people are going deeper and deeper into the forest and hacking down the vines at the roots instead of pruning them. And it takes a lot of ayahuasca to make a small amount of drink. So this whole cycle rinse, repeat drink all the time mentality. It's not good for the plants and B it's not good for your mental health because there's an addiction pattern there. Addiction to the feeling of being connected to other people when actually you need to get connected in your day to day life rather than in this sort of ceremonial space. So it's all about, for me, learning those lessons and actually integrating the experience. You know, one ceremony can give you enough data to process. Yes. Yeah. That's true. Like I said, I'm still working on asking for help. So that's it's very true. And you know, some people, they get to a point where nothing happens in the ceremonies and and that's ayahuasca kind of cutting you off. Just saying. If you keep drinking and abusing me, I'm just not going to give you anything because you still haven't done the homework from last time. And that's really common for people. They just get cut off and then they get frustrated and angry and the ceremonies just aren't hitting the spot. And that's usually the reason why, in my opinion, that can happen.

Well, I felt a bit actually scared about Ayahuasca kind of disappearing from the Amazon. I had this feeling, oh, I hope it doesn't happen, because I really hope that also my son, who is not even two years old, can have that possibility when he grows up if he chooses to, of course. So by the rate it's disappearing, I don't know, I felt like I'm sure about that. It felt very sad.

I mean, there are a lot of people who are quite invested in it trying to sort of help sustainability and help the indigenous and the countries in which it grows and, you know, protect the resources and manage it. But, you know, it is an issue that's sort of not very spoken about. But as I said, it's also being grown in other places because it's safer than trying to import it. So I don't think it will ever go extinct. But just we still need to be aware of it as a resource. U1

Yeah. Something that came to mind is that meditations after a ceremony are really something different. They're really something like, I've never experienced those meditations in other times just after a ceremony. Is there learning in that as well?

And are you talking whilst you're still in the retreat space? But like just after the effects of Worn off, you're just sort of

not when you're at home, basically when you're home and you go into meditation.

I mean, like I said, for me, the effects of neuroplasticity and the spirit of the plant stays with you for a good while. Yeah. So cultivate that relationship. You'll be able to dialogue with her for as long as you like. You know, she's in you. You've got that connection. You've been given that connection by the shaman as well. Like where we actually have this extra level of bonding. It can be really beautiful and that you can still access that energy. You know, we're all connected all the time is often just remembering it. And so again, the ceremony gives you ways and means and then afterwards you can learn from that. For me, another really important meditation to do is feeling the feelings that you had in ceremony, like reconnect to the actual energy of the emotions you felt during the ceremony that were of the more uplifting that a lot of people experience, a lot of gratitude or feeling loved in a way they've never felt loved before. Those can be quite common, and we can practice those feelings. We spend a lot of time practicing how to worry and how to be stressed, and we're really good at it. And our body, you know, there's a great book by Candace Peart, Molecules of Emotion. And it was a really groundbreaking understanding that each emotion has a chemical attached to it. And so it's a chemical reaction through our body. And so as people know from drugs, the the receptors of the cells, in the presence of a chemical, you get more receptors. So you can take in more of that chemical. And we we're great with stress chemicals for that. You know when we get addicted to it. That's why a lot of people, one of the reasons why a lot of people, when there's nothing to worry about, they don't feel quite right. And so they find things to worry about because the body is addicted to that chemical norm. So what one great thing that I ask does is it resets the system so that those you flush that out and so normal feels great instead of stress. And so if in those first few weeks you can actually meditate on the feeling of love, of gratitude, of the uplifting things you felt, your normal will reset to that. And so when you're not feeling those things, that's when something feels wrong, which is, in my opinion, a much nicer baseline to have.

I wish I had known all this. How can people get in contact with you to get help before and after ayahuasca?

The best place is to go to my website which is Awakened potential.Co.Uk.

Thank you for sharing that with us and for being so open about it.

My pleasure. It's it's really important that we connect as humans.

Yeah. Is there any last messages for someone that is planning or maybe is kind of hearing the role of ayahuasca, but is not so sure yet? Or someone may be planning to to go on a retreat? Is there any last thoughts?

There's a document I created that we can also put in the show notes. It's called the Wonder Wheel and it's the who, what, when, where and why? Okay, it's the five questions you should be asking yourself before drinking. And for me, you know why you want to drink is extremely important, as it will help you find the context which is most suited to you. You know whether you want you need to work in a place where people are trauma informed and have the tools to help you. If you're going to be visiting really difficult times from your childhood, you need to have the right facilitators in place to then be there to help you deal with the aftermath of what might come up in your ceremonies. If you're going for physical healing, I would go to the jungle and go. Go to where the doctors are. Because it's a completely different experience. But you know, everyone will have their own reasons and needs. And the other thing is, you know, make sure you do your research and try and find the most ethical ceremonies that you can. And what that looks like is they will be asking you a lot of questions about your health, your mental health, and your family, your medications. If people aren't asking you those things. Be aware that they might have a space that's not particularly safe, you know? Yeah. And yeah, just think about it and feel into it. You'll know inside whether it's right for you or not. And there are practical things you need to consider. So I would generally suggest talking to someone who's been there who understands and doing your correct preparation. And, you know, the more, the more you put into something, the more you get out of it. So going in with the right intention and the right feelings and the right, you know, internal, you know, having cleaned out your diet, cleaned out your mind beforehand, you're much more likely to have an easier physical experience with the ayahuasca. You know, that's why the diet's important. That is beforehand.

Okay. Yeah. So I'm not coffee, right.

Coffee is the one thing. I mean, that's just about sensitivity. You know, if you've got loads of caffeine in your system, you're already pushed. You're not as sensitive to other things, but it's more sort of, you know, the unhealthy foods, the unhealthy data that you take in. You know, she's a purgative. She's got to go in there and clean you out. So if you're dirty inside, then she's going to have harder work and have to do a lot more physical cleaning before she can get to the mental, emotional, psychological stuff that you might be looking for. So if you clean up first, she's got a much easier journey into your body and into your psyche. sometimes.

Okay, I understand, so maybe the ones that are purging a lot or there's no connection, I don't know. But some people are purging a lot. Maybe they needed to go on a diet before Can it be?

Yeah, Sometimes

okay I understand. Thank you so much for being here with us. Really happy to have had this conversation with you. And I know where to go next time before. Before when I start planning going to a new ceremony. Thank you so much.

My absolute pleasure. It's been really lovely talking to you. Thank you.

Now it's your turn. Let us know what health and abundance subjects you want us to cover in the future. Do that by commenting on the post on Instagram. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you so much to Sophia for being here with us today. If you liked it, please leave a review at Pod chaser.com. Just search for the podcast and write a good review. If you have questions or want to book a session with me, please do let me know on Instagram or on my website. adakomani.no

In the next episode, we'll be talking about Quantum Healing hypnosis technique developed by Dolores Cannon.

And remember, you are always creating your health and abundance. What do you choose to create today?