Three years ago I visited Shaman Winston in the Peruvian Amazon for an eye-opening ayahuasca experience; at that time, many happy discoveries within myself had me anticipating an inevitable, future return. This time around there were fewer surprises and a little more adversity, yet again I feel better afterwards for having done it. The trip entailed two nights in the jungle removed from electricity, wifi yet accommodating in ample supply of mud and biting flies. It took a plane from Lima, a car, a boat and a short hike crossing a river twice to reach the Shaman’s compound. I was barefoot and shirtless the entire time (the native flies were well fed) — the two weeks subsequent itching a fond reminder of my time spend mostly naked and unafraid. The low point of the weekend adventure was the afternoon of arrival — enduring a preliminary “cleansing ceremony” which wasn’t a part of my initial experience two years prior. The intent of the ceremony was to remove toxins and emotional restraints that would otherwise prohibit ayahuasca’s intended lessons. People who eat unhealthy diets, drink excessively need to be purged beforehand so that the plant can work its magic, so it was […]
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One year ago, while I was in Lima Peru, I ventured to a shaman in the Peruvian Amazon to drink ayahuasca. I gave a talk in Bogota, Colombia two weeks ago on my experience — what happened. I thought it was important to articulate the details and I recorded my story. If you are interested in hearing it you can listen to that story here.
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I stayed in Lima, Peru for the month of May and limited my side trips to a single weekend adventure to the Peruvian Amazon. The last time I was in Peru was about five years ago to white water raft and hike the Inca Trail; it was nice to not have the obligatory visit to Machu Picchu hardlined onto my monthly itinerary. Instead I opted for a weekend getaway outside of Taropoto – my destination being a Shaman that was a plane, car, boat and hike away secluded in the Amazon. I spent a weekend preparing for and taking Ayahuasca a traditional, psychoactive, entheogenic brew that the Peruvians have used ritually for thousands of years. As a native Coloradan who doesn’t even smoke pot, drugs have never appealed to me. You might be skeptical when I tell you that ayahuasca is not a drug — it’s medicine. Perhaps the distinction is semantic to hear but to me it creates an important distinction between what the experience entails and what drugs entail. People take drugs to feel better — people take ayahuasca to become better; at least that’s my personal experience. I became better. Ayahuasca is the closest thing to magic I have […]
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