MY UNFILTERED, PERSONAL JOURNEY WITH AYAHUASCA - From Sitting to Serving

The following words express the raw happenings and authentic reflections of my journey with Ayahuasca, from the moment She called me to receive Her medicine in Peru in 2015, to 8 years later when She came back to me to ask me to serve in a retreat in Ecuador, thus completing a fastidious integration process.

Ten years after the ceremony that transformed my life, what I’m sharing with you now is a raw, unfiltered story of unfolding, of completion and of new beginnings.

A breach. An awakening. A healing journey. A rebirth. And what I’ve learned from it.

I’m hoping it will inspire you somehow. To trust your intuition. To answer your soul’s calling. To dive into the exploration of your shadow. To awaken to your truth.

The Story

In August 2015, I bought a one-way ticket to Lima, Peru - I was 23, single, had freshly graduated with a Master’s degree in Psychology, had enough money saved for months of travel, and was animated by a great desire to explore something different, to dive into the unknown with an open heart and push my limits.

I was supposed to take this trip with a friend, but she pulled back and I decided to go on my own. Looking back, it is clear that my soul had paved the way for my awakening.

The time had come.

It ended up in a 6-month solo backpacking adventure through South America. From Peru to Brazil, through Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. I have chills connecting to those memories again. This trip is a breach in my existence. It cracked me open. There was a ‘before’, and there was an ‘after’.

There I met myself, my depth, my beauty, my strength, my soul… in the eyes of those who crossed my path, in breathtaking landscapes of infinite majesty, in long sleepless nights on the road looking out the bus window, in the bright Andean colors, heartfelt songs and sizzling winds, in both aloneness and loneliness.

No return ticket, no itinerary, no mobile data. I had a French travel book guide as a roadmap and my intuition as a compass. I had no destination, and I was never lost - I had found myself. Never since have I been able to recreate such a flow, connection and dance with Life while travelling.

I’m not going to enter into details about this broader journey. All I will say now is that it was an initiation. It was extreme, in both the direction of beauty and that of suffering. Light reveals darkness, bliss reveals anguish, consciousness reveals unconsciousness. And vice versa.

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Without me knowing, Ayahuasca was present with me from the very beginning. The man who drove me to the airport to take my flight to Lima said to me: “You’re going to Peru, you’re going to meet the GrandMother.” I had no idea what it meant and had never heard of ‘Ayahuasca’. I didn’t pay much attention. I always felt that drugs weren’t for me.

The first days of my travels were chaotic, full of obstacles and logistical issues. Amongst others, I almost missed my second flight and a car crashed full speed into the wall of my hotel on the first night. As if Universe kept asking: “Do you really want it?” - it, I understand now, being my awakening.

Once in Peru, I kept meeting people who had recently sat in ceremony with the Plant Teacher. I didn’t think much about it yet started noticing a common glow in their eyes and vibration in their words.

In October, while cruising on the streets of Arequipa, my attention was drawn to an Australian guy about my age; we exchanged a strange gaze as if recognising each other and I found out later on that he stayed in my dorm. Aaron and I became friends, we partied, we went on some adventures, and eventually decided to head to Cusco together.

Fernando, another travel companion, met me there too, and we spent our time in cafes, where he extensively shared about his Ayahuasca ceremonies, while I drank his words - fascinated as I had always been with matters of the mind, the world of Spirit and also because I was deeply falling in love with the Peruvian folklore I was immersed in for two months. Her spirit called louder and louder, as a pounding heart within me.

When Aaron told me he wanted to drink Ayahuasca, I thought, “Yeah, why not?”

At the end of October, we got an appointment with a shaman, went on a short diet and started the purification process - a fast and a purge with volcanic water.

This happened all in Cusco, the ancient capital of the Inca empire, perched at 3 399m, base camp to Machu Picchu and many other ancient sacred sites, where the strange is the norm, souls communicate without words and synchronicities are a part of everyday life. I was ill from the altitude for weeks. Floating above myself, reflective yet anchored here and now on the land’s magic.

We drove to a retreat center in the Sacred Valley, where we were to stay for three days and attend two ceremonies. There we met a Shipibo Maestro shaman, a Peruvian lady facilitator who also served as translator and a Shipibo female assistant. I remember being impressed by their piercing kind gaze, dresses covered in geometric patterns and feathered headdresses. I felt humbled by their powerful grounded presence which seemed to revive something in my own heart.

We had a first individual meeting to talk about my health state and intentions - I was here out of curiosity for their tradition, I wanted to heal whatever needed to be healed within me and I was willing to expand my consciousness.

They explained that Ayahuasca is a gate opener between the conscious and the unconscious. I would get visions, emotional release and I would go through a purge, too.

We gathered in the ceremonial room later that day. Two beds with blankets, pillows and buckets were awaiting Aaron and I, facing the ‘mesa’ and seat of the shamans full of their sacred objects, feathered wands, chakapas, fabrics with Shipibo patterns, candles, shells… some cups and a bottle of Coca Cola filled with a dark thick liquid - the Sacred Brew, infused with prayers, tradition. ancestral wisdom and spirit. They performed their opening rituals with incantations in traditional language, spilling of Agua de Florida, mapacho smoking… which I carefully observed. Then Maestro came to me, blessed me and handed me a cup filled with Ayahuasca. I drank.

The brew was black, full and thick, bitter and harsh in taste - present and substantial. I drank it all, as Maestro encouraged. Then I waited, in a mix of excitement, apprehension and naive curiosity. The night was falling and the room became darker, illuminated by the dim light of a candle. I felt my pupils dilate. The shamans went on with ceremonial deeds and when the first icaro resounded, I felt a pinch at the core of my heart, as if a key had entered a lock and opened a door within me.

The geometric patterns of the Shipibo fabric that hung from the wall before me started moving in strange ways. The chants carried me through that door, transforming shapes and depth and textures of all that surrounded me - suddenly the world as I knew it dissolved to wear a different adornment. Bright colors and ever-shifting patterns scrolled before my open eyes in an overwhelming symphony. Music became form - I could see music. My senses didn’t process reality the way they were used to.

From that moment on, I knew my journey had begun.

Five hours followed, where I found myself catapulted into another realm - this of Spirit - and compelled to an inner exploration while my mind blew open to receive consciousness in a brutal outburst - all at once like fireworks. Boom. I certainly wasn’t ready. I had never had any psychedelic experiences prior to that night, let alone in a ceremonial setting with shamans trained from birth to a millennium tradition.

The medicine is ruthless for what you ask for, you receive, whether your ego wishes to comply or not.

I cried more tears than I had ever cried, and felt a relief that freed an immense space within me. I confronted buried memories of cold empty rooms and abandonment. I fell into the void, in an anguish out of this world, an unimaginable dread; I was nowhere, in no time, alone, trapped in a nightmare I couldn’t escape. Struggling to let go of control, to contain this experience, to surrender to the medicine; the more I resisted, the more I suffered and tumbled down.

I didn’t know better. I asked for help, which I received several times. I could hear Aaron worrying about me from the depths of his own journey.

I felt an immense discomfort in my body, somehow unable to throw it up, which grew bigger as I fell deeper into meanders of darkness, gloomy swamps, quicksands swallowing me while serpents crawled up on my body. I wanted to get out of the room, but I couldn’t move. When I asked to turn on the light, I was answered: “All the light I need is within you”.

I thought that everyone there was insane and that I had made a mistake coming. I felt like I had lost my mind - which was true.

My energetic body ripped open, receptive to All That Was. Maestro came to me with mapacho, feathers and more icaros to assist my liberation.

Then I lay down on my side, sobbing, as the lady caressed my hair while singing lullabies. To this day, I precisely recall the sound of her fingers on my scalp. There, in her motherly presence - I died. I vanished into nothingness, floating around the Universe, being nothing and everything at once. I remember experiencing myself as the Sun, as a flower. That was scary yet a relief from the hellish nightmare I came from, so I enjoyed it for the most part, receiving the teachings.

I died, and then I returned to my body in an inhale deeply felt to the bottom of my lungs, as if it was the first in a long while, refreshing and shaking me alive.

Alone again on my bed, I started seeing people from my past and family, feeling overwhelming waves of forgiveness taking over me. Then came pure unconditional love and pure bliss, replenishing my cells, awakening my soul, reviving my human blueprint. I had moments of pure joy, laughing out loud at the silliness of it all. I saw colors and shapes and life again, embarking on a comic strip/video game-like race through funny buildings and places. Jim Carrey showed up and made me laugh a full, embodied, irrepressible laugh.

Slowly, I left the visuals behind to come back to my physical body, feeling dense and sore yet extremely happy to return to this tangible reality. Self-actualised.

When I actually could sit down and realise what had just happened, I looked around at everyone and asked in a smile: “What the fuck just happened?” The candlelight felt amazingly soothing and welcoming, displaying against the wall a reflection of myself that I loved watching. I acknowledged the vomit in my bucket as the testament of my journey. The shaman kindly had me smoke on his mapacho.

Five hours that felt like a thousand never-ending years, summed up here in a few lines - language surely can’t render these otherworldly experiences.

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I didn’t drink on the second night - I had enough to integrate already. The following days, I relished in the profound peace of renewal and a newly acquired trust. I had been baptised into the beginning of my new existence.

If the rest of my travels went well, abundant in beautiful encounters and sharing, filled with raw beauty and adventures, flowing in full alignment, my return to Europe and to my old life was a shock. As vulnerable as a newborn, and shaky in my new foundations barely erected out of the rubble of the former ones, I was thrown back without defences into a rough and gross reality. Misunderstood, dysfonctional and lost in between a self I could’t fully embody yet and my former outdated being - it was hard.

I stayed at my mom’s place for a while but life as I knew it was impossible. I had become so extremely sensitive that I couldn’t listen to the radio or watch TV - their low frequency was a direct attack on the purity of my soul. I saw through the veils of the matrix without being able to comprehend it. I was confronted with judgment, fearful projections and rejection from others.

I found comfort chatting online with friends from my travels, immersing myself in those memories again and watching documentaries about Ayahuasca, trying to make sense out of it all - I became a little obsessed. My thoughts were over there, with those with whom I could be my “real” self.

To be honest, I hardly made it through the first following year. Nothing from my old life made sense anymore - I completely stopped drinking alcohol and became vegan. Any situation that challenged me out of my normal state of consciousness, even in the slightest way, destabilised me. My nervous system was overwhelmed, dysregulated, and I was unable to return to having a “normal” social life. I developed a serious anxiety disorder and PTSD related to my experience.

The cultural world I returned to simply wasn’t able to hold space for my new self - my true sensible self - and it took me a few years to find the resources within to walk my healing path up to where I am now - solid, composed and confident, aligned with my purpose and thriving.

3 Key Takeaways :

• there is no true healing without proper integration: having a mind-blowing/life-changing experience is one thing, being able to stand embodied in your new foundation is another.

  
  

  The work of integration, the process of bringing the teachings into the body, of making sense and alchemising, of implementing them into your life is what true healing looks like.

• the real work starts after the ceremony: when you return from the journey with newly acquired insights, when you get to face yourself and make decisions, when you start walking the path of transformation

• healing doesn’t have to be harsh and lonely: peer + professional support is extremely beneficial in this type of work.

  
  

  Care and safety are primordial - doing shadow work can be re-traumatising if not done within the proper, safe and sacred container. Having people who can hold you through it, witness you and understand you is a game-changer.

  
  

The Invitation

It took me about eight years to integrate this experience.

My mind has been blown open, and I used all of this time to fill in the gap in between, thanks to a full dedication to my spiritual healing journey. Eight years of profound work, which made me the woman that I am today.

The medicine of Ayahuasca provoked my awakening and guided me through it the entire time. I felt Her many times along the way, holding my hand and patting my head with love. As promised, She gave me exactly what I needed.

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Ayahuasca came back into my life eight years later, in a vision during a shamanic journey to present me with my next mission: an invitation to co-facilitate a plant medicine immersion retreat in Ecuador with Kichwa people.

As I completed a long and profound cycle of healing, studying and integrating, I also started a new one in service to the same medicine that once initiated me.

For obvious reasons, providing a safe and sacred container is of paramount importance for me as a facilitator. My main mission is to offer an adequate integrative frame and cross-cultural assistance in order for the participants to make the best of their journey, feeling perfectly supported, held and guided through.

The retreat is especially designed around integration - before, during and after the retreat. Basically, we have created the perfect retreat we would love to attend, knowing what working with Ayahuasca means and requires.

I know in my cells how transformative sitting with Ayahuasca can be - how powerful, profound, and wonderful! It is an amazing and incomparable opportunity to face what prevents you from being the greatest version of yourself, and to thrive as you remember what it truly means to be human in this life.

Thanks for reading me,

With Love,

Iris

If you're feeling a calling to join our next Immersion Retreat in Ecuador, learn more about the retreat here or send me a private message.

If you are struggling with your plant medicine experience integration, know that you are not alone - feel free to reach out ♡