I’m writing this from paradise.

Sitting in the warm air of a tropical oasis, looking back into my memory of what was one of the most challenging and rewarding, testing and enlightening, journeys of my life. My first dip in the vast infinite ocean of the master plant medicine dieta of the Amazonian Shipibo-Conibo peoples. From here, belly full of banana pancakes made with my own love, body re-fueling, the process seems easy, the way all things seem in the limitless mind of the eternal dream.

While I was there, deep in the portal of what was my first take of a master plant diet, it felt like I might die trying to make it through to the other side. The medicine of this format of retreat leveled me to the ground, humbled me at the roots of mama Gaia, tore out my ego, withered my flesh and form, and left me so light I felt I might drift away in the treasured breeze. At times I felt like my brain had dried up, shrivelled, and I might lose my mind. I remember writing in my journal that it felt like my logical thought-constructing mind was being taken away by some spirit entity, and the idea came to me that I might as well just let it go. Realizing there was much clutter in there that could be given back to the ethers.

So much was gained, revealed, shared that it feels like although attempting to catch these intangible spirit teachings will forever be like trying to catch stars in glass jars, essentially impossible, the desire to share at least a residue of what was given to me, with you, whoever you are reading these words, is too strong to let myself yield to inertia. Trying to describe Ayahuasca is like trying to describe the Infinite. Difficult, yet the pleasurable source of endless philosophical consideration.

I wonder who you are dear reader, and why you feel inspired to learn of my journey. Perhaps you are seeking something, a remedy to a feeling of emptiness when all your conscious desires seem met. Perhaps you are curious, like a cat poking her paws into a plant pot, just to see what’s there, what the soil feels like. Maybe you resonate with my journey, it sparks a memory of something you see in yourself. Perhaps I am a mirror, an inspiration, or a guide. Perhaps I have sent you this article, offering you a window into my soul because I value your reflection so deeply.

Whoever you are, thank you. For to give and be received is the dance of reciprocity we are all here to remember. It is this dance of giving our love, and having it received that mirrors the natural order of life. Of mother earth giving her gifts, and all her children lapping them up like waves on the shoreline. When we give thanks, it truly completes the circle. These words are my thanks. My infinite gratitude turned to symbols, readable, interpretable, and offered at the altar of my relationship to all of creation.

The Shipibo-Conibo people are one of many indigenous peoples who work with the plant spirit medicine teacher Ayahuasca. Her name is now likely a #, and perhaps you have heard of her. Perhaps you have heard her called a drug, or a psychedelic, and imagine me hallucinating and seeing dolphins in the sky with fractals and neon lights for the past month. There are many ways to see everything, and even more ways to see Ayahuasca. I’ll share with you what  I have learned, from going to the best source of the tradition I could find.

  To the Shipibo, Ayahuasca is the Mother, the mother of all the plants, and the plants are the ones who make life possible on this Earth. So in a way, she is the Spiritual mother of all beings. To enter into the world of Ayahuasca one needs to loosen their grip of conditioned belief and allow a lot of spaciousness to allow spirit and matter to be seen as One. Completely inseparable.  Ayahuasca is both a Spiritual entity, and a physical plant remedy. Combined with another plant teacher, Chacruna, they offer up a slow-released experience of D.M.T (Dimethyltryptamine) which is a plant spirit molecule which is present in all living beings, yet activated only at the moment of birth, and death. 

 The Shipibo were shown, by spirits, how to prepare an entheogenic brew of certain plants, primarily Ayahuasca and Chacruna, and enter into the realm of D.M.T through ceremony with this brew. There are many other ways people work with D.M.T, through frogs, and synthesized compounds, though most of these are quick release ways which create a sudden blasting-off kind of energy, and don’t incorporate a physical aspect of healing the body.  For our purposes here, in this weaving of story, we’ll focus on the Ayahuasca-Chacruna experience of D.M.T. Also good to note that the reduction to its chemical constituent is exclusively western science. The Shipibo do not view their mother through a lens anything like the periodic table of elements. Even though their vine looks a lot like D.N.A.

 This spiritual-physical plant remedy of Ayahuasca opens the system of the one who drinks the brew to a deep, non-linear, spiritual experience of themselves, usually as connected to all beings in a unified whole. It can open the mind to visions of past, future and present lives in crystal clarity, allow you to relive and often integrate past events such as stored traumas of your own life, your ancestors, or any beings. It can also allow one to see into the endless library of infinite potentials your life holds, or Life herself holds in her sacred cosmic womb.

 It is used traditionally as a healing remedy for all kinds of physical illnesses, and particularly powerful for psychological ailments, which in the Shipibo worldview are due to spiritual attacks, or spiritual dark energies that have attached and are living off the person’s life force. The curanderas (healers) can actually remove these energies through their songs, their shamanic use of tobacco, and the techniques of physically sucking the energy out of the person and purging it, among other methods. Sometimes sitting in an Ayahuasca ceremony feels, and sounds, like sitting in a jungle hospital sci-fi horror film. Sometimes it feels like sitting in Eden, but with aliens.

Many people work simply with the Ayahuasca ceremony model of medicine. There are some preparations required, but generally the process is relatively short and a few ceremonies is sufficient to access a deep release of stagnant energies and allow for a sense of healing. When a person feels the call to work deeper, the next step in the Shipibo bundle of medicine is to embark on what is called a Master Plant dieta.

 Dieta is the Spanish word for diet. This word holds all kinds of juju nowadays, with the idea of trying to “cut carbs” or “go Keto”, to try to lose weight. In this context, it is still fitting in that you do have to significantly limit the foods you ingest, and you will certainly lose weight, but the main point of the word use is that you are dieting a particular Master Plant. You are taking in the energy of the plant, as your diet. 

 There is an abundant pharmacopeia of plant medicines in the jungle, much beyond Ayahuasca alone, and these plants work best when approached with the honour of sacrifice. The dieta is a form of sacrifice. Each plant has its own medicine, spirit and teachings. To learn them, one offers themselves to the diet process. In the diet, one sacrifices many elements of normal life in order to both show one’s worthiness and sincerity of being given the powerful teachings of the plants, and to make oneself extremely sensitive and subtle to be able to hear those very teachings.

 In the most traditional form of a Shipibo dieta, one would be completely in isolation in the jungle. Someone would bring you food, without looking at you, leaving it at the door of your “tambo”, a simple open air jungle hut. Some sources say the food would need to be prepared by a post-menopausal woman, to give you an insight into how subtle the energies get. Your food would consist of only Yucca (a jungle root starch vegetable), Plantain, and a plant eating fish, usually the species Bocachica. No oil, salt or spices would be added to your food, and you would drink plain water. Your time would be spent solely in concentration on connecting to your plant, which you would drink in a prescribed dose by the curandera (the healer, or “Shaman”) overseeing your diet.

Though I wish I could say I managed to do that deep of a dieta, the modern world is such that there is a vast array on the spectrum of what is considered a diet. Mine landed somewhere on the relatively luxurious side of that spectrum, while remaining essentially traditional. I was allowed to eat some other vegetables, and beans, maintaining my vegetarian values. I spoke to a facilitator sometimes when I had deep processes I wanted help with. I was told I could read, though realized for the second half of my time that it was better not to. My food was prepared by a young vibrant woman with dyed green hair who would also let us know the food was made with “mucho amor”, or much love. Though there were some luxuries, the basics of the tradition were kept intact. 

This process of dieta has been calling me for some time, always with a mix of excitement and fear. Finally, I found myself drawn, in the unlikely time of the pandemic, to head to Peru and embark on my first plant dieta with three women curanderas just outside of the little jungle town called Pucallpa. The pandemic was showing me all year that the medicine was to get silent, and let the spirits do the talking for a while. I had tried to cultivate this amid my “regular life” in Canada, but it wasn’t happening. So many distractions. My cell phone, my computer, my friends, the urge to be useful, the urge to make money, the urge to produce some great piece of art. Many excuses to perpetually fill the silence with content. 

So I decided to take the leap and go, feeling that actually the risk of staying in my continually sinking energetic state in the confines of the semi-lockdown and fear state back home was actually higher for spiritual disease than flying to the jungles of Peru. The risk of covid felt significantly less than the risk of withering my most treasured connection; to Spirit.  Because my highest value and desire in this lifetime is Spiritual freedom, the cost of not answering what became an undeniable call from Ayahuasca and her pantheon of healing plants was too high to let the culturally normative narrative of #stayhome win. I fought with the shame society might place on me, I wrestled with guilt for awhile, and then I remembered that everything is emptiness, filled with thought-forms, and no thought-form is inherently more righteous than the other from the view of the ultimate. Which is where I like to make big decisions from. I checked in with the centre that the Maestras felt safe receiving guests and was told that they were very eager to be in service and had been dieting themselves the whole pandemic. That they were strong, and not afraid of covid. Re-assured I was making an ethically responsible choice, I took the leap.

Landing at the retreat centre was humbling. Peru has a very strong energy to it, and the jungle is a dense web of life that can be both incredibly inspiring and profoundly frightening. You never know what kind of insect may choose you as an exotic and exciting new destination, which is perhaps what the jungle feels about you when you land on her clay soil. I knew I was there to “do my work”, yet everything seems easier in the mind than when actually stepping through the grass and setting up in the Tambo for the next four visceral weeks of the unknown. 

Time always seems like a breeze, like nothing, when looking forwards and backwards. Yet from the long stretched out days of silence, of no distractions, he can start to feel never-ending. 

With all the stories running around in my head still drinking coffee, eating cookies and sucking on nipples in dreamtime, I began the process of landing in the visceral experience of my first dieta. The moisture in the air, everything always wet, including your own skin, the sheets on the stiff bed and lumpy jungle pillow. The hunger growing in my belly as we limited our intake of food, gave up all salt and oil, sweet, spice, flavour and welcomed in small portions of boiled vegetables, rice and some beans. The odd boiled egg was like a Christmas present of nutrition, that though difficult to not feel viscerally in my increasing sensitivity to energy the life of the chicken who gave up its form for me to eat that saltless boiled egg of nutrient, was graciously received to fuel my quickly depleting form. I felt my inner snake happy to receive the bounty.

I met the Maestras, and began to realize what an absolute leap of intuitive faith I had taken in bringing my life, my deepest wounds, my traumas, my sickness to three women I’d never met. Saying essentially “here I am, broken, hurting, wanting… can you help me, dear stranger in your beautiful woven skirt? I have flown across the world, brought you money for that is all I have that I feel you may have need for. Can you see into my soul and find what is stuck, pull it out, and let me be free?” All this to these women I’d never met before. 

Intuition is something that is almost as difficult to explain in words as Ayahuasca ceremonies. Perhaps I will leave that to another time, and simply say that by divine Grace I have been blessed with an inner compass that though damaged by the natural polishing of life bestowing sorrows and pain, abuse and trauma which withers away at one’s internal trust, somehow my compass still works impeccably well. I found myself in the hands of three genuine, skilled, and highly experienced Ayahuasceras (women who serve and heal with Ayahuasca) at a time where hardly any other modern-day-zen-lunatics had the audacity to show up. Due to the pandemic, the centre was almost empty, and I found myself receiving the personal, practically private, initiation into the plant medicine dieta path I had been dreaming of. 

The whole centre is a Matriarch. Run by Maestra Ynez, a brilliant medicine woman in her late 70’s who has been dieting and working with Ayahuasca since she was 14. She helped initiate her two daughters, who have also been working with the medicine for some 40 years. Together with their father, they hold the ceremonies in an exquisite bond of family. 

 I didn’t realize how much my healing process coming to the jungle was going to be about healing my family relationships. I had become kind of comfortable being a self-proclaimed orphan. Unable to find understanding with either of my parents in the storm of trauma, repressed memories from childhood coming up to the surface over the past few years of my own inner work, differing worldviews, values. The spaces in our togetherness had become vast and wide as the sky and I was getting used to being a golden eagle flying solo in the infinite vastness of God. 

The deep ties of the centre to the weave of family, combined with the particular medicine of the plant the Maestras prescribed me, set the stage for an inexplicable opening in my heart to my family. The entire centre is run by family members. Each person playing an integral role. From the young man watching over the door during the ceremonies, opening and closing it and shinning a soft red light so no one fell to the ground in the sometimes mobility challenged space that is Ayahuasca. To the young women coming to sweep out our tambos every day with love, warm smiles, and jokes. To the little boys sweeping leaves from the pathways and gathering wood for the fire to cook the medicine, and heat our vapour bath plants. To the uncles organizing the details, translating Spanish to Shipibo for Maestra Ynez, dealing with the payments from guests. Everything was woven into one.

 Much like the Mantas, the traditional embroidered cloth art of the visions one sees with Ayahuasca, each being in the family is woven into a bigger system, to make the full picture. The beauty of the big picture couldn’t exist without what on it’s own would be just a little thread. This symbolic medicine worked me deep, and I began to see the disease of the modern day seeker is that we are in essence orphans. Homeless to place, to space, to culture. Ripped from our traditional lands, many of us are Pagan refugees, having had our songs stolen from us, our ways forgotten, our ceremonies outlawed, our Maestras burned as “witches”.

This lack of identity, of being part of something bigger than ourselves, a family of origin, is what weakens our spirits and makes us so susceptible to mental illness. In my family, my paternal line comes from Scotland, and the british Isles. We used to have our Tartans, our sense of belonging to something beyond ourselves. But that slowly was taken away, and I find myself born to a line of people who left home to seek something new, a new possibility here in Canada. Given barren raw land, and beginning again in a foreign place. Doing our best to survive amid the trials of being a foreign pioneer in the prairies, it’s no wonder to me now that we hurt each other some along the way. Sometimes so deeply we forgot how to love each other.

Here I was, living among a family who carries an unbroken lineage of Ayahuasca healing. And just by living among them, I was tuning into the medicine of their manta. Their weave. Though I was perhaps seen by them as the privileged one, the one with thousands of dollars saved up to spend on seeking my personal healing. To me they were a mirror, and I saw in them a privilege that can never be bought or sold. A privilege I have never known.  I cannot pay my family to remember our songs, remember our ceremonies, beat our drums and howl at the moon together. This was humbling. To realize I’m homeless, and that this homelessness has its own gifts. For one, it creates a state of unattachment that leads one to do crazy things like fly to foreign countries and drink vine teas that make you encounter cosmic serpents. Something I probably wouldn’t have had the inclination to do if I was happily fulfilling a role in a tightly knit weave of karmic purpose.

The inspiration to share my insights is so raw and alive that the twists in this narrative will be serpentine, which is all too fitting for the way my story would choose to weave herself. For continuity purposes I’ll come back to the dieta specifics, to share the information for those curious about embarking on their own process one day, perhaps in this lifetime, or the next.

Once you have cleaned yourself out through the pre-dieta protocols, arrived at the centre, landed in your intention, and shared what is going on for you, the Maestra will choose a plant she has a personal connection and experience with that she sees fit to help you in your condition. She opens your diet through a ceremony involving singing incantation to the physical medicine, a tea prepared of the roots, leaves, flowers, and/or bark of your plant. She sings her incantations to her Mapacho (jungle Tobacco Nicotiana Rustica), imbuing both the tea and your spirit with her connection to that plant. A plant she has dieted many times. In my case, the Maestras’ favourite plant, the beloved Bobinsana. 

You then take the prescribed dose of this plant every morning, before drinking water or eating, with as much concentration as you can offer. For me this meant smoking my Mapacho in the bobinsana pipe I received from the center, praying profusely to her, sharing all my intentions, desires, asks. Pleading with her to come and be with me, inviting her into my body and life. I would then proceed to sing to her. Many endless streams of melodies came through and I found myself often losing my conscious mind to hours of singing to my Beloved jungle Goddess Bobinsana. 

As I gradually became physically weaker, lighter, empty, the spaciousness of my being became an open stage for Bobinsana and Ayahuasca to show me new content, show me new visions of my life, who I am, what is needed in the story of my life. Through the ten Ayahuasca ceremonies we shared over the course of the month, the teachings got to weave deep, surrounding me in the vine-like medicine that is Ayahuasca. A vast web of connections was woven, a profound heart opening, a culturing of stillness and internal peace that has no words. For words would be thought-form, and she was showing me a place well beyond those things.

Some people experience very intricate and precise visual visions, like this one: (painting by Pablo Amaringo)

I would caution anyone going into ceremony not to expect that though, lest they be disappointed, missing their own medicine while waiting for someone else’s to appear. For me, I occasionally get these kinds of vivid scenes painted before my closed eyelids like candy-cane lane treats. More often I get felt visions. Which is how I mostly operate. For example when I give massage/energy treatments, it is rare I see a crystal coloured image of something, and more often I feel and sense what is going on in the person, and receive a kind of image that is formless. 

Sometimes the Icaros, (the songs the Maestras sing to move the energies and evoke the plant spirits) create precise images in my mind’s eye. Scenes of coloured lines weaving into my being, moving parts of my mind, or body-scape, performing their energetic surgery through a kind of vibrational suture. Often Shipibo style ceremonies with Ayahuasca are referred to as “surgery”, and that is definitely the experience I had. It felt like one’s job was to be a good patient and stay still and concentrated, that often it was more important not to get lost in the visions, in the “light show” as my teacher back home calls it, and simply stay fully present and still for the surgery to take place.

 Other times entire scenes emanated out from the songs. Endless pulling out of serpents, thousands in my case. Once, I quite literally had my mind opened, my brain taken apart, the various folds stretched out through the songs, and cleaned. Parts removed that were not needed, old memories, memories of trauma, plucked out the way a monkey might remove a flea from its friend. The songs cleansed my whole mind, even as my brain resisted giving up the left hemisphere so heavy with thought-constructs and limited identity, the songs lifted it all out, gave it a good clean, and then put it all back together again. Fresh. Noticeably different. Well after the ceremony. This was something I literally saw, and felt happening.

 As the days continued, and my body weakened further, I faced many tests. The Maestras had warned me of them, the “pruebas” or tests, would come to see how serious I was, how ready I was to receive the blessings of the plants. The element of sacrifice is carefully tested by your plant. You are asked by various elements of this spiritual world turned 3-D how sincere your quest is. For the gifts of these plants are powerful, and they know not to share their gifts with those who are too weak to handle such powers, lest they use them for their own ego-centric purposes. 

 This is where the folklore of the Shipibo becomes something I tread lightly in fully trusting. I am hesitant to engage in any narratives where spirits are not benevolent, but subject to human-like traits like suspicion or judgment. My training in Tantra doesn’t view the spiritual realm in such a lens, so the Shipibo cosmo vision was often difficult to digest. Because I knew I was clearly the absolute novice in this terrain, I chose to listen to their guidance while keeping my third eye happily fixed on Shiva (Absolute-unsullied-undefinable consciousness).

I would bet anyone who sits through a single ceremony with these Maestras would sense they (the participant) know very little about the science of what is happening in the ceremony, yet see without a doubt that something very profound is certainly happening. The precision of their un-scientific, yet highly precise form of doctoring had me humble and choosing to respect and listen to the instructions rather than claim any kind of superior understanding based on my experience within other systems of healing. I decided it was my duty and respect to fulfill my part of this dance by honouring the protocols and adapting the view of the folklore, if perhaps only for the duration of the dieta and post requirements. I reminded myself often that I could choose to set these beliefs down at any time once I had fulfilled the requests of the container of my diet. And that in order to decide what parts of traditions might be evolved, and what parts are integral and must stay, it is important to first learn, and respect, the teachings of the tradition. 

 One example that I grappled with profusely was the restriction on sex. I understood and accepted that sex with another person would be distracting to the energy of our process. Knowing well as the Tantrika that I am that sexual connection is a complete merging of energy, I knew I didn’t want to go breaking that part of the agreement. What I couldn’t understand was why connecting to my own private sexual energy was off limits. What plant would be offended by that, and why would I want to impress them? 

 As someone who was sexually activated as a child, engaging in my own sexual energy is one of my oldest friends. As an introverted and choosey lone wolf, self-pleasure had been a life-long hobby. Giving up that ceremony in exchange for this one was at times incredibly testing. I got to see all my patterns and conditionings, the way I use sexual pleasure to both celebrate, and escape feelings of discomfort. For the first time in my life I had to become completely conscious of my sexual thoughts and feelings both in the waking life and in my dreams, for even breaking the restriction in dreamtime was considered “crossing” your diet. Meaning, screwing it up and shocking the plants. 

 I was re-assured by the gracious facilitator that if I crossed my diet in my dreams, say by having orgies in rivers with buffets of chocolate fountains and coconut cream elixirs, I wouldn’t be punished because it was my first diet. I was still like a baby in this world, and only beginning to become conscious in my dream space, let alone willful. Though this was reassuring, I still had to grapple with endless nights of longing to comfort myself, ignite myself, bring energy to my withering body. Knowing that my sexual energy could re-awaken my saltless, spiceless, drying out brain with pure nectar of the highest order, and resisting engaging in it because my plants would get mad and leave me, was a hard story to sit with.

 In the process, I learned that this kind of clinging to something, no matter how beautiful and powerful it is, is still an addiction. And I realized that though I had healed the manner in which I connected to my sexual energy, I hadn’t actually healed my addiction to that energy. I had only changed the style, away from goal oriented, quick orgasmic sneezes and into long fluid, valley experiences of bliss as worship of the Divine. I was still hooked, and would find myself lying awake at night after ceremony with my hand perpetually flowing to my clitorus.

 Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, wow that’s a lot of information to share here. And yes, it is. But I answer with, do you not have some shared part in this story? Is our entire global culture not deeply afflicted by a sexual energy obstruction, a simultaneous block and over-emphasis on something which has the potential to create life and be the most sacred thing us humans can share, yet remains something we buy and sell, leverage, keep secret, and use for power? Wouldn’t it be of benefit for us to bring this conversation out into the open? I’m willing to offer my story to the altar of this cause.

 Particularly this deeper finesse on the subject. There are plenty of amazing women out there ecstatically celebrating their re-discovery of pleasure. And I celebrate them, for I know the cage of which they have escaped and would never want to imply that freedom is not something to dance wildly naked for. And, I believe there is a next chapter to the refinement of this energy, to be the ninja-dakini capable of both complete unbridled sexual ecstasy the moment she wants to engage it, and able to contain it so perfectly not a single leak makes its way off your mat and into your neighbours subconscious. Again, perhaps a topic for another time with just a seed planted here.

All this sexual energy prueba talk to say that I managed to stay with it. I managed to battle in the endless night that is the post-Ayahuasca ceremony. Lit up, awake, yet exhausted, with nothing to do but be in one’s own energy. Whether that is something nice, or something agitated. Essentially, to meditate whilst lying in bed activated with lingering D.M.T in your system. I managed to break through and now, as I sit with my last three weeks of this prescribed dose of complete sexual abstinence I am no longer wrestling with myself. I know I will come back to her, that she will “come again” so to speak, and this period of emptiness in the cathedral of my sexuality will only nourish a deepening of that choir once I choose to return to it. This is a cause for celebration, and a prayer to, perhaps, inspire someone.

The dieta process of continuously and steadily emptying oneself out provided an incredible reinvigoration of all the things I had come to take for granted in my “regular” life. In my mild pandemic depression I had become uninterested in food for the most part. Finding it a struggle to care enough about it to choose something to eat sometimes. I had been consuming food and drink like it was nothing. No giving of thanks, no stopping to really sit and smell it, pray to it, enchant it with my well wishes. 

After about five or six days of the dieta food my entire being was ripe with visions of Mama Gaia’s cornucopia of gifts. Daydreams of anything from mango to peanut butter toast, oat milk mochas to masala dosa. Realizing how much I had taken all these gifts from mother earth for granted, eating them without thanks, brought tears to my eyes many days as I layed in my hammock waiting for the breakfast bell.

A bell that would remind us that our boiled vegetable soup was ready. A soup I knew would not quench my hunger, that wouldn’t contain the things my body longed for; oil, salt, flavours, something cold even. Yet a soup that would taste like the elixir of the Gods, a soup that would make me cry in gratitude, feeling all the hungry bellies the world over, starving for a little nourishment. 

I share this to remind you that sometimes the biggest medicine is Nothing. To give something up, to let it go, and then perhaps invite it back in again, is to enchant it, to re-invigorate it with blessing. What would our world look like if everyone did a dieta like this? Even without the plant medicines? Just to sacrifice the luxuries of the world, for a few weeks. To let the body get weak, to feel one’s real and honest hunger, and the humility that ensues.

I imagine a world where all world leaders are required to do what I did, sit in their own energy for a month, drink 10 cups of Ayahuasca, meditate with Bobinsana, and sacrifice their pleasures. This would be a world where choices would be made with an understanding of their interrelationship with all beings. A world where leaders would act with humility. A world very different from the one we currently find ourselves in. This would be a world I might feel honestly safe to bring a child into.

One of the traits of Bobinsana is that she opens the creative voice, the expression of the dietero (the one dieting). So, I could easily sit and wax poetic about my insights and inspirations well into eternity. Alas, there is also the medicine of being lean, and though this article is not lean, it may have some elements which can be thinned out to allow a greater fruiting in the ones to come. Like trees, pruning away aspects to allow in more light, which in turn fosters greater growth for future generations. 

 What I will close with is that this dieta has been the absolute best birthday gift I could have given myself. I chose to step into my 30’s, in the heart of my Saturn return, in the heat of this pandemic, with my Brave Heart leading the way. I went in with full faith, a dash of responsible caution and doubt, and a whole lot of Love for all beings. I went in with the intention to help the world, and the Medicine told me that to truly help the world we need to heal ourselves first. So this diet became a deep personal healing of my own being, and my most intimate personal relationships. 

 My relationship to my parents, to my loved ones, to my ancestors. My relationship to my beliefs, my own mind, my conditionings and thought-constructs. My relationship to my view, the way I see the world, my vision of a beautiful new dream and how to enchant that dream into fruition. This dieta, my first date with Bobinsana, a relationship I pray will become a lifelong journey, opened my heart, cleared my mind, and healed me. I am now a fresh little sprout, a flying rainbow serpent who just got her wings, and is ready to safely and slowly, poco a poco, adelante (little by little, going forward), step into this new world with wide watery eyes.

 Eyes wet with love, with the salt water of the ocean that pours forth as tears of compassion for myself, and all my relations. May we learn to be together, to weave as One. To eat, to sing, to seed as One. May we imagine a beautiful dream, let the past go, and spend our energy concentrating on the journey back to Eden. With the snakes in their places, the angels at home in our internal heavens, may we learn to love one another. The way the Mother does. The way Ayahuasca loves.

If you find yourself inspired, I am happy to be a bridge for you to create this kind of experience for yourself. To connect you, to support you. For as we heal ourselves we truly do heal the whole, and the whole is ripe and ready for our healing Love. May you feel the love in these words, and let them drip like nectar onto your thirsty eyes. Wet with longing to cry, to offer your tears of thanks to our mother, for all she has given us in this lifetime. For the gifts we share,  as we read and write our versions of the Love story.

 Perhaps something to ponder next time you order yourself an Oat Milk Mocha. Perhaps you can think of me, swinging in my hammock in my tambo in Peru, dreaming of you, of your eternal blessings. May you drink for me, for yourself, and for all beings. And remember to give thanks.

You can find out about the centre I visited on their website: https://niweraoxobo.com 

I’ll share more of my insights in the weeks to come. Blessings dear One. <3