The Shaman Apprentice

I'm currently in the Peruvian Amazon, this being the third time that I've come here to work with Ayahuasca and other plants to learn more about healing and also to open up myself more.

I think right after my awakening I thought that the awakening was this one huge thing that just happened to someone and then their life was completely changed and they were forever healed from everything. When I read about it it sounded like something someone experienced and then never felt pain or ever suffered again.

For me this was never true other than of course the immense transformational experience it was, instead as I look back at the past 8 years, I have been intensely involved in my own personal healing. It might seem odd to need "so much" when you are so much at peace and love to still continuously look for healing.

I sometimes question if I need it, but then I always end up asking myself again but if not now then when? If I don't focus on healing it all now and going deeper now and learning more now. Then I just have to wait till later and what's the point of that?

Yet that inner dialogue is a very small part of it, the big part is that feeling that this is where I need to be right now.

I have so much right in front of me right now that are everything that I am passionated about, mostly healing but also art and especially music. These different aspects are coming together for me to learn more and to explore my own expression and to maybe find a new expression in my healing practice. Which seem to be happening all by itself right now.

I don't know what it is specifically but I'm surrendering in a different way and stepping out of the way more and way more energy is moving through when I do this. I feel as I'm getting much much better at moving and clearing energy and to be able to really see my clients as well. But it's hard to measure other than to maybe reflect on it and continue to see what happens in the long term.

My work with Ayahuasca always seems to me as to walking into the unknown. All I know is that she (the sprit of Ayahuasca) has invited me to work with her as a Shaman but the road there is not clear and my idea of myself as a Shaman is something that has been in a dream state and I don't really know how that even looks like in the future form, but I also know that I don't need to know either.

That's the whole dance, the becoming or watching this journey unfold. As simple and ordinary as it becomes. Maybe that's really the magic that I've come to learn, the beauty of living with the land and to really be able to learn how we can heal ourselves, all of ourselves, both our physical as well as emotional, spiritual, mental bodies. Through the help of plants.

Anyway, I've had about eight ceremonies and they all been different and it's interesting how subtle some feelings can be yet have such an impact on our lives. I had a vision when I was working with a client of becoming her and then not feeling good. Then I came back to myself again and that feeling I could feel and see it separate as a bubble. An emotional bubble. Yet so subtle that you wouldn't notice it as anything intense or even painful. It's just a feeling of dread or fear that you've had for so long that you gotten used to having it there all the time. You don't notice it anymore, it's become something you started to identify being.

I remember when I was super depressed before my awakening and how I didn't remember my happy self. I didn't remember that there was a happy self in there. I thought she was gone and would never come back. But we always experience life in the moment and a different state of being will cause us to have a different experience all together. So interesting how these subtle emotional bubbles can still have such an impact on our entire life experience, yet we walk around being completely unaware that this part of our experience isn't necessarily who we really are. If that makes sense?

I find that when I'm working with plant medicines such as Ayahuasca this can happen with great force and speed. Huge inner and external transformations within very little time. Many of these subtle emotional bubbles get cleared and we come out of the experience as a completely different person. This can happen in a healing session of course too.

Working with Ayahuasca I notice how it's healing my body as well, not just from the detox symptoms as needing to go extra much to the bathroom and so on. But seeing how I seem to have gone through a rejuvenation therapy and seem much younger all the suddenly.

Now as I'm working with Ayahuasca in the Peruvian Shipibo tradition, where a Curandera (a healer) sits in front of you and sings her or his healing song into your body. The frequency of this song in combination with the medicine in your body works to help you re-align your energy field and your physical body to work in better harmony.

This relationship between the healer and the medicine is what I'm exploring. As you start upon this path there are many different dietas that you have to go through. I've already started with a few shorter dietas with some master plants.

These other master plants helps you to work deeper with Ayahuasca and ultimately with Gaia herself. As I've understood it, my calling to these plants and to work with plant medicines is a calling home to connect with Gaia again. So that we can all heal and so that we can all learn to remember again.

As you may have heard the saying you become what you eat and this principal is at the core here. You diet with different plants to acquire some of their qualities. Some plants help with opening the heart, some help with healing self-esteem, some help with visions, some helps with singing and so on.

The different dietas are taken for different periods of time, some are just a few days and others are for several months at the time. This depends on the person who's working with the plant, what their intentions and needs are.

So my next dieta will be my first longer dieta of 3 months and I will be working with some plants that are called the Amarosos - the love plants. These plants are worked with to learn to call in love. So as I normally feel so much love all the time, I'm curious to what this dieta will do for me. Yet I have learned on this path that there doesn't seem to be an end to the amount or intensity of love that we are capable of experiencing. Yet I also know it's not just going to be about love, it's going to be a way for me to connect deeper with Ayahuasca and to be able to learn more from the plants themselves.

I will start the dieta once we have all the plants that I need. I will be dieting with about 14 different plants and we are missing a few that we need to go on a trip out in the jungle to get. Then during 3 months I will not eat any oils or fats (natural sources of fat such as avocado is fine) nor salt. Nor can I have sweet fruits like mangoes, fortunately bananas and grapes are ok. Thank god! :)

By removing fat and salt we remove a lot of flavour from the food so that it starts to taste bland. We do this because both salt and fat keeps us grounded and "heavy" but also so that we won't be able to find comfort in food. Nor will I be allowed to have sex, not even masturbation and I shouldn't even be thinking about sex during this time.

All this to remove all comforts and all the "cushions" from our experience so that we can allow ourselves to get annoyed, irritated or whatever it may be that needs to come up to be seen and felt so that it can heal.

I hope to share parts of this personal journey with you and I will probably start to write and talk more about plants and plants as medicines as we move forward. Just so you know. :)

Much Love,

Kristina