What is Ayahuasca?

Ayahuasca being prepared.

....and why it is a CURE for so many human ailments and planetary conditions

Ayahuasca, also known as yage, the vine of the dead or Mother, is a psychedelic plant medicine that works in human beings at many levels; physically; emotionally; mentally; chemically; and maybe most importantly for our times spiritually. Ayahuasca is a combination of the Ayahuasca vine and the Chacruna leaf. The leaf and the vine are crushed up and boiled together to extract the active molecules within the plants to make a foul tasting infusion or tea.

The leaf contains high concentrations of the active psychedelic ingredient DMT (Di-Methyl Tryptamine). The Vine contains an enzyme called MAOI (Mono Oxidase Inhibitor). The combination of the DMT and the MAOI produce a magical psychedelic potion. When ingested in ceremony under the guidance and direction of experienced plant medicine practitioners, called Shaman, Ayahuasca enables the ceremonial participant to re-tune and re-balance themselves back into harmony with their own divine nature, the natural environment and natures intended natural world order.

DMT is produced naturally in most (if not all) living organisms including human beings. It has been termed the ‘The Spirit Molecule’ by Scientist Rick Strassman. I highly recommend reading his book of the same name or watching The Spirit Molecule documentary on YouTube or below. Particularly so if you are not already personally familiar with the effects of DMT or Ayahuasca. This should be considered mandatory research prior to engaging in working with this miraculaous medicine.

DMT is produced in humans by the pineal gland (located near the centre of our brains). The production of DMT is most active in humans while asleep and dreaming. It appears to be involved in the later stages of foetal development and it is also produced in the brain during the death process. Strassman speculates that it is somehow part of the mechanism by which conscious spirit enters and leaves the body enabling us to have a conscious (or unconscious) life experience.

DMT is a short acting tryptamine which is rapidly processed out of our bodies by the Mono Oxidase (MAO) enzyme. MAO is a naturally occurring enzyme that catalyses the oxidation of monoamines thus rendering them inert in vivo (in the living organism) in a matter of 5-15 minutes. The Mono Oxidase Inhibitor within the Ayahuasca vine temporarily blocks the Mono Oxidase enzyme within us. This allows DMT to remain active in vivo for longer. Thus the combination of the vine and the leaf allows the DMT to work over a longer time frame, usually 4 to 6 hours in humans. DMT is a Tryptamine with powerful healing properties that is only just starting to be considered properly and examined by western scientists. It continues to be discredited and shunned by governments and Western medicine.

In the UK and most of the Western world DMT is listed as a hallucinogen under the Misuse of Drugs Act and is classified as a Class A drug. It is therefore restricted and illegal in most first world countries where people are prone to misusing drugs and medicines. Fortunately in the Second World countries of the Amazon basin, Ayahuasca is much better understood and has been used safely for several thousands of years. Although admittedly increasingly less so by unscrupulous individuals succumbing to our Modern Culture of excess which is based in greed, fear, control and power over others. Ayahuasca activates and enables love, light and creativity to shine. Ayahuasca is the Mother medicine. She activates and enables all the other plant medicines used within the shamanic healing modalities, most prevalent amongst the indigenous cultures of the Amazon Rainforest.

Ayahuasca is properly considered by indigenous cultures to be the most powerful of planetary medicines. The Huni Kuin people, and many other indigenous tribes, have been successfully protecting their wisdom and traditions regarding correct use of this medicine for over 10 thousand years, deep in the remote heart of the Amazon Rain forest. They have recently been receiving visons from Ayahuasca, the Mother medicine, to share their knowledge of this and their other plant medicines with the world.

I used to work for Pfizer Research and Development, at the time it was the largest and most profitable pharmaceutical company on the planet. Big Pharma tends to go into the Amazon to find and emulate natural medicines to synthesise chemical compounds that can be patented, owned and sold for huge profits. There hasn’t been a cure released for human dis-ease in a long time. That is not to say that cures have not been synthesised, they may well have been but instead of being made available to the general population they are locked down and hidden within private corporations and behind complicated patent laws. Big Pharma has no interest in curing human dis-ease because doing so would destroy the very markets that generate such huge profits for them. Don’t expect to find any cures for human ailments coming out of the Pharmaceutical industry anytime soon. They deal purely in relieving and masking symptoms to maximise drug sales. The indigenous tribes of the Amazon have been working with this miraculous curative medicine for many thousands of years. They consider it to be the most powerful and sacred of medicines for purification of mind, body, spirit and soul. Huge profits cannot be readily generated from naturally abundant and freely available plants and so a process of disinformation and fear was initiated over 100 years ago to discredit natural remedies and plant medicines.

The first world is very arrogant. This is evidenced by our Western Society claiming and naming itself ‘The First World’. We somehow did this despite our modern culture being objectively ‘the new kid on the block’. Modern Western culture is in truth the latest world. Yet more and more people in the so called first world are gradually coming to realise they have a problem, an empty restlessness. Something that the second and third worlds have known about us for a long time, the first world has a dis-ease.

More and more people are becoming aware of their own dis-ease. Becoming aware of the potentially huge benefits of plant medicines like Ayahuasca and Cannabis, to human health and the health of the planet. Due in part to the efforts of established and respected scientists and researchers like Rick Strassman who are not solely dependent on private corporations with vested interests for their funding.

Fear, dis-ease and trauma has been prevalent in the world for some considerable amount of time. This has lead humanity away from healthily and harmonious function. Away from most of us being well balanced and in tune within ourselves subjectively and objectively within our natural environment. This by consequence has created a modern culture with a very strong desire toward control over environment, greed (for fear of lack) and power over that which we consider other than ourselves. The balance is badly out of whack as evidenced by the gross inequality we see in the world today. Ayahuasca is a CURE, Ayahuasca can cure us individually and collectively. It helps develop patience in patients and enables us to find healthy alignment within ourselves so that the desire to power, greed or control over our environment and others relaxes and dissolves.

If enough people drink Ayahuasca and do the inner work, inequity and inequality will gradually fade away and eventually disappear entirely. It is safe within a properly supervised clinical context but is not especially effective as yet, although this is changing. Timothy Leary and Stanislav Grof have made great strides in developing safe and effective clinical healing modalities with psychedelic plant medicines. Psychadelic plant medicines are freely available in every country of the world, you must just step outside into nature and look. How to effectively apply psychedelics for healing has been apparently lost to the West and in the UK the magic mushroom is used primarily as a recreational drug purely for it’s hallucinations and weird experiences. However recent clinical research is indicating hugely positive benefits for people with anxiety and depression that are simply two of the multitude of symptoms of our modern cultural dis-ease. 

If used properly in a ceremonial context I have no doubt magic mushrooms and truffles can be as effective to re-tune and re-balance us in relation to ourselves and our environments as Ayahuasca is. The European Shamanic traditions however appear to have been lost and so they must be remembered and recovered. Ayahuasca is the Mother medicine, you can ask her questions and she will provide answers. She unlocks the downloads and provides the keys to understanding the coding stored in our very DNA. To decode the messaging contained within the DNA of all the sacred plants and medicines that decorate the entire face of the planet.

It is at present only safe and effective to use Ayahuasca within a sacred ceremonial context and only with a properly experienced and well journeyed Shaman. 

This is why I am inviting a very limited number of spiritually aware and active curative medicine seekers to come and join me as I lead our group, from the UK, to the fifth annual Eskawata Kayawai Festival of Transformation and Healing, 17th - 28th of November 2018 hosted by the remote Huni Kuin Village of Novo Futuro in the Acre Region of the Brazilian Amazon. Are you feeling the Amazon Calling? Will you answer her call?...

 Video of our first Eskawata Kayawai festival in 2014

 https://vimeo.com/155112674

For more information and to book a place on this journey of a lifetime please read my Eskawata Kayawai V Festival post