WHAT IS AYAHUASCA
How does this sacred plant work?
Ayahuasca can be seen as an unraveller of the knots of our lives. Where the elements that no longer serve are cast aside disassembled.
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We enter a process that sheds this baggage from our being. These take the form of ancestral DNA,, personal histories of scaring, regrets of the past and unfulfilled connections. And the release of the grip of addictions.
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Coupled with this is Ayahuasca’s ability to bring states of divinity and bliss into our states, to give us a taste as Sufism states of another worlds.
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The work with the medicine places an emphasis in understanding Oneself in the face our own and others' lives. Ayahuasca is an amazing tool which enables us to investigate our role and responsibility in connection with ourselves and other worlds.
This laborious climbing the ladder of personal and professional achievement , is a road that dulls curiosity and enthusiasm quickly, it is dry. The Ayahuasca adds a flavour of fresh child like discovery and wonder.
What does it ask for?
This mystical world of ayahuasca encourages a fertilisation of inquiry, not a dry intellectual accumulation but a inquiry to feed life. To breathe the significance of what is life back into our world. Ayahuasca opens the door of our personal, social and spiritual compass. This reorientation of the self back towards the center requires no fixed belief or dogma. It requires no handing over ones power or excessive investment in “figuring it out”. A leap into the essential trusting in an unfolding path.
What is Ayahuasca made of?
Ayahuasca is known by many names throughout Northern South America and Brazil. Ayahuasca is the hispanicized spelling of a word in the Quechua languages, which are spoken in the Andean states of Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. Speakers of Quechua languages or of the Aymara language may prefer the spelling ayawaska.
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The brew or tea as it has been known in the west in its pure form is made of two plants: the Banisteriopsis Caapi and either Chacruna or Chaliponga.
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Ayahuasca word refers both to the liana Banisteriopsis caapi (one of the ingredients) in the brew and to the brew itself. In the Quechua languages, aya means "spirit, soul", "corpse, dead body", and waska means "rope" and "woody vine", "liana".' The word ayahuasca has been variously translated as "liana of the soul", "liana of the dead", and "spirit liana”.
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Chacruna (Psychotria viridis) contains the hallucinogenic—or entheogenic—indole alkaloid dimethyltryptamine (DMT). It is known primarily as an additive to the ayahuasca brew used in South and Central America.
The beta-carbolines present in Banisteriopsis caapi, inhibit the enzyme Monoamine Oxidase and reduces the metabolism of serotonin. Due to the MAO-inhibiting action of the vine, otherwise non-orally-active tryptamines such as N-N DMT from the admixture plants (Chacruna or Chaliponga) can reach receptor sites in the brain, unlocking the entheogenic qualities.
This use was made legal in Brazil in 1992 when B. caapi, P. viridis, and the ayahuasca tea were exempted from the list of illicit drugs. In countries such as Spain, Portugal, Central America Ayahuasca falls under legal vacuum area and continues to be used and shared. In the rest of the world Ayahuasca is considered strictly illegal.
Ayahuaca contra-indications
There are no records of fatalities from eating proscribed foods, but there are numerous reports of severe headaches.
Interaction with pharmaceuticals can be much more dangerous than food interactions.
Many antidepressants (eg, Paxil), tricyclics, heterocyclics, SSRI’s, migraine medication such as sumatriptan (Imitrex) amphetamines, and opiates may also cause serious drug-drug interactions with MAOI’s — even some OTC pharmaceuticals like antihistamines, decongrestants, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine can have potentially serious interaction with Ayahuasca.
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If you are taking pharmaceuticals, please inform yourself about the potential for MAOI interaction before taking Ayahuasca. If you don’t find an existing thread about your medication on the ayahuasca forums, you are encouraged to start one.
Purification
There is another aspect to diet with Ayahuasca, the spiritual ayahuasca dieta. The dieta has many variations, because it is practiced in many cultures (practically all traditional Ayahuasca cultures have a form of dieta, which is remarkably similar across cultures that are otherwise very dissimilar), and because it has various purposes: being healed, learning how to heal others, and learning how to communicate with plants. A dieta can last any length of time from one day to years. In its essence it involves avoiding strongly flavored food and sexual stimulation. In a western setting, it would undoubtedly include fasting from television and mass media as well.
What is Ayahuasca purge?
“When it came, it was earthshaking! ALL the filth, negativity, malice, ill will, and unforgiveness of myself, was loosed from me. Image after image of all life’s unpleasantries, ill will, the dual part of my nature, that evil that is seamlessly woven into the very fabric of much of this world, and pollutes, and deviates us from our true soul/self, it was all gloriously expelled over the course of 20-30 long, glorious, vomit saturated minutes.”
​The Purge may be strong or mild, may happen several times in one session or may not happen at all, but it is a central part of the Ayahuasca There are ways to reduce the purge, but if you can learn to accept it and flow with it can actually be very enjoyable. It is a release and purification. If you fight it, it will be more difficult and unpleasant. Give in to it and just go with it. Imagine all of the distractions, discomfort and pain you have within you being released with each purge. Let it flow as it is supposed to. Accept it as part of the experience.
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After it is all through you will feel very good, very clean and pure.
The clearer ones system, the better able one is to receive and integrate spiritual energies and the knowledge of Ayahuasca. The concept of subtle body phlegm is an important one in Amazonian shamanism. Vegetalistas say that Ayahuasca is needed for cleansing all the flemosidades (phlegm formations) that accumulate in the intestines. The flemosidades are believed to arise from environmental toxins, certain foods, trauma, and moral transgressions such as ill will, etc. Analogous to blockages of chi in the meridians, or prana in the nadis, flemosidades disrupt the smooth functioning of the body and mind. Clearing the flemosidades prepares the body to journey deeper into health and wisdom.
So what is Ayahuasca really?
The Ayahuasca potion is a multi-levelled medicine that works on both one's essence and psychology. It is very difficult to try to say exactly ‘what’ Ayahuasca does or ‘how’, because it presents a profound mystery to the human psyche.
Since it is for no one person to say what Ayahuasca is and what it does, this website exists as a means for explorers to exchange information and broaden their knowledge of this profound Medicine.
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