Ayahuasca plant medicine can serve as a powerful tool for healing, as well as spiritual and emotional growth. It can be described in simple terms as a very big, very shiny mirror, and with the right set and setting, this can allow us to understand the true roots of the fear, trauma, and other emotional sources that manifest in various ways in our life. From a place of compassion and love, this can offer us deep insight into our own psyche and provide us with the tools and understanding to let go of the patterns that are no longer supporting us. However, it’s important to have the right time, space, and highly skilled healers and facilitators to help you make sense of what comes up and surrender to the process fully.
With the proper screening, preparation, container, and integration support, it is very rare that negative psychological effects result from partaking in ayahuasca ceremony. However, there are certain medical conditions that are contraindicated with plant medicine, including (but not limited to) schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and psychosis. Additionally, certain medications are contraindicated and should be discussed with your doctor to determine if an ayahuasca retreat is right for you and if it is possible to change or taper any medications. Beyond medical contraindications, an ayahuasca experience can be considered unsafe due to inexperienced healers who are unable to hold the energetic space during ceremony; admixtures to the ayahuasca brew that can negatively react with the guest; lack of support or an unsafe container throughout the process; or ‘medicine stacking’, wherein numerous different plant medicines are taken within a short period of time which can overload the system and potentially cause someone to become ungrounded.
At Soltara, safety, well-being, and healing is of utmost importance to us, and our main goal is to ensure each person gets the most out of an experience with us. Our aim is to create a safe and supportive environment encompassing all aspects of the healing process.
We only work with highly experienced indigenous Shipibo healers from the Amazon region of Peru. We are connected with several powerful family lineages who have generations and decades of experience working and training with this medicine, such that they are able to safely and effectively hold space for our guests during ceremony. Our facilitation team also has combined decades of experience working with ayahuasca and facilitating ceremony for thousands of guests. Our ayahuasca brew is made with only the two main ingredients, ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaf, and is cooked in the village of one of our healers in Peru. We also create a strong container to work specifically with ayahuasca only, as we believe it is important to create the space for this medicine and tradition to do its best work.
Beyond our on-site team of highly skilled healers and facilitators, we consult with qualified professionals during the screening and preparation for your journey, and our stringent medical protocol and intake process (including a detailed medical questionnaire during registration) ensures each guest a safe and fulfilling experience, mitigating any risk of potential contraindications with our medicines. In addition, we have a facilitator trained in Wilderness First Response (WFR) and a fully stocked medical kit on-site. During your stay, our safety protocols allow you to rest easy and comfortably, while our staff provides a sanctuary for your emotional and spiritual well-being.
In line with this, our focus on integration takes the same approach of a strong and supportive container. We understand that while a powerful experience and initial cleansing are crucial catalysts towards healing, really that’s just the first step in the much longer (truly lifelong) process. In order to create lasting healing, we feel it’s necessary to empower the person with the tools needed to enact the benefits of such a catalyst into their day-to-day life. And beyond that, provide a supportive container over the long-term to help inspire lasting change. Much of our team has come from working at previous plant medicine retreat centers, and within our communities we saw the need people had for a longer-term relationship with their process, whatever form that may take. You can read more about our integration program here and our safety protocols here.
It is true that ayahuasca can involve purging including vomiting and diarrhea. If you need help getting to the bathroom, our facilitators are on call to do so, and they will let you know how to easily signal them should you need assistance. It is important to note that the concept of purging can take many different forms for different people, including crying, yawning, sweating, shaking, and laughing, among other things. Nevertheless, our facilitators are trained to respond should any scenario arise, and you will be well taken care of quickly and lovingly should a challenging physical situation occur. As we like to say, everything is normal on ayahuasca, and whatever happens during ceremony is perfectly fine and nothing to be ashamed of or worried about!
At Soltara, we have had many guests come through who have had little to no experience with psychoactive medicines, who have found deep and profound healing working with ayahuasca. In fact, less experience can sometimes be more beneficial, as it can make it easier to enter into the experience without prior expectations, a key component that can play a major part in how much you get out of ceremony.
Working with ayahuasca can be a process, which is to say, if you are planning on working with the medicine – especially for the first time – we recommend allowing yourself the space and time to undergo multiple ceremonies in a safe and supportive container. This is because it can take some time to build up enough trust and a relationship with the medicine that will allow for the deeper work to unfold. Often times, just one ceremony can open up the work but be insufficient to get significant benefit from it and then have a chance to energetically close what has been opened. It is for this reason that our minimum retreat stay is five nights. We have found that at least three ceremonies, along with integration support during and after to help guests process what has come up, can allow for a deep level of healing to occur.
We have much more information about ayahuasca on our website – here are some good starting points that may help you get a better idea of this medicine and how it works:
Preparing for your ayahuasca experience
Upon registration, you will receive an information packet which will include our dietary and preparation guidelines to prepare you for your experience. Beyond the specific foods we list to avoid, in general it’s best to approach the diet focusing less on deprivation, and more about creating an environment within your body which gives the medicine the best chance of permeating and illuminating areas that need healing. In general, a clean diet which focuses more on whole foods and less on excessive salt, sugar, spicy foods, red meat, pork, alcohol, recreational drugs or substances, excessive dairy products and processed foods, is going to allow the medicine to work with you in the best way possible.
Learn more here about the best dieta practices before drinking ayahuasca.
This won’t prevent you from participating in ceremony. While some traditions do indeed indicate that women on their period should not participate in ceremony, our healer’s recommendation is that you simply tell one of our facilitators if you are on it, to relay to the healer, for them to be aware of that energy release happening during ceremony.
Our healers have decades of experience working with medicine and navigating the energetics of the ceremony space. We have been working with Shipibo healers for several years and have never had any issues as it relates to creating a safe space for those who are on their cycles.
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