Having lived abroad in various countries and having visited many places all over the world, I can say without hesitation that my journey to the Peruvian Amazon has been one of the most blissful experiences I ever had.

During the 14-hour long ride on a lancha (ship that looks like a huge shoebox) to Herrera I was impressed by the huge variety of sceneries. Little villages passing by, every half hour or so, the lancha changes from one side of the river to the other.

Some rainbows, a couple of other boats on the Amazon and around 6 pm, the sun starts disappearing. This in combination with locally grown mushrooms, a full moon and good friends will make me remember this part of the journey for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, the 8 days in the camp inevitably passed too fast, that’s why I will return probably end of this year or in 2020.

The hospitality of the people who were taking care of our needs is incomparable. Whether we wanted to go for an extended hike through the forest or swimming with pink sweet-water dolphins – they made it happen. Having had experience with other substances (e.g. Ibogaine) beforehand, I came to Peru with a handful of expectations. But after arriving at our destination in the jungle – without any need (or possibility) for use of electronic communication tools – I freed myself from my expectations and had the opportunity to really be in the moment, without brooding about the past or worrying about the future.

The Shamans really understand their work and invest a lot of time and energy into the ceremonies. After two or three days, my rusty Spanish was becoming more understandable and fluent, so I could interact more with the hosts without Hector having to translate for me. During the day, we often had extended, insightful discussions about various topics.

The ceremonies started after sunset and lasted 4 hours. Having fasted during the day, we usually were quite hungry after the ceremonies – fresh Papayas were a good remedy. I can truly recommend this Trip to all those who are up for a transforming week in a safe and blissful set and setting.

Zurich, Mai 2019
Jonathan F.
Teacher

We all face issues in our lives, and depending on how well we react to these issues, we can resolve them ourselves, or they will remain in our bodies as trapped emotions. 

These emotional blockages will have an influence on our energy flow and the way we will be able to deal with life. Whether stuff is holding us back even though we have resolved to become a better version of ourselves will heavily depend on whether we still have unresolved issues. These will create goal conflicts deep within our unconscious, and so we will be sabotaging ourselves without even knowing it.

Before I went on my trip to Peru, my life had literally fallen apart completely. I was involved in a very nasty divorce, with three children involved. Me and my ex-partner were fighting about everything and anything, both deeply hurt from events that had foregone said divorce.

Even though I tried to keep my body and mind in good shape with the right nutrition, exercise and meditation, I became weaker and weaker. My once fiery spirit was merely capable of getting me through the daily grind, which already sums up how my life had become – or better – how far I had let life slip out of my hands. I had passed a lot of time with the lecture of books about becoming a better version of myself, however, I also had gained the insight that mere willpower and the idea alone of growing and contributing was not enough. The drama I had let into my life had taken an immense toll on me and now I was paying the price for everything I had been complacent about before.

I had already made the experience of smoking Changa, which is also known as the “smokable version of Ayahuasca”. It had given me tremendous insights into what life is really about – for me at least – and taken a lot of my fears away completely. Or so I had thought. I knew that in order to free myself from all the dark stuff holding me back from living a life true to myself, I either had to go through some kind of a psychotherapy treatment or to trust some of the oldest medicines known to men. Since I doubt western approaches more and more, I decided to trust the “old ways” and take a step into the unknown. 

The trip from Iquitos to the depths of the Amazon alone can be called a life changing experience. I have never felt so connected with nature and so humbled by the sheer presence of it. It is difficult to describe exactly what I felt, but the river and the forest is so powerful in a very “grounding” way that you cannot do anything else than feeling rooted again. We were three guys from Switzerland on the boat together doing this trip. The rest were Peruvians and our spiritual guide with a Shaman.

We received “ongos”, mushrooms growing in the forests in the Amazon. I had never consumed mushrooms before, and since I am very open to “psychonautic” experiences, my body started to react quite strongly. First, I felt the connection with the forest getting stronger than before, my body started vibrating and a force I cannot describe started “pulling” on my solar plexus. Similarely to my experience with Changa, my mouth started slowly opening, be this a reaction of my body to the relaxation induced by the mushrooms or just an odd tick from my side. I began to see the colors more vibrantly and began to feel that all the trees were centuries old, not just plants, but actually entities able to communicate with me. I was a very special experience, and for lack of better words, I chose to call it “sacred”. I felt the urge to close my eyes, and immediately, the vibration of my body grew even stronger. There was a feeling of deep understanding and oneness, and an entity which was clearly female started to communicate with me. It wanted to show me that my fear of women I had developed due to the disappointment and deep hurt I had experienced with the mother of my children was unfounded. The entity showed me how new life is created as two energies are combined, the male and the female. It is hard to describe all this in words, but there was a lot of light and a climax like feeling of love and freedom. Just as this moment of absolute bliss had passed, something else came out from the river or the woods, something immensely powerful and very dark. I could literally feel how it grabbed me inside my chest, it was as if a demon took possession of me. There was a feeling of sadness, fear, loneliness, the complete opposite of what I had experienced only moments before. I was immediately confronted with my biggest fear and saw things that disgusted me. Bugs, worms, seemingly ancient creatures with tentacles, teeth, crab and bug like, creepy and repulsive. Since I am a very creative person that hates everything connected with destruction and violence, this was exactly what I was shown. I tried to focus my prefrontal cortex so that I could move to a more meta level, but it was completely useless. I tried to talk to the entity and I got really pissed. I told it that nature was creative, that this was all an aberration, that I could take it, that it would pass. And since I am a very stubborn being, I actually literally said: “Is that all you got?” It wasn’t, and I immediately regretted my reaction. I never resisted what I saw, but in my own way, I wanted to experience this dark stuff the whole nine yards. Which, looking back, was good, but not fun. The entity or energy threw everything at me and gave me the bodily experience of complete and utter desperation. I felt my spirit, my will, everything, getting weaker and weaker. I heard the energy communicate: “Everything you touch will turn to gold – at first – but then it will turn black. Your children are cursed, and so is your ex-partner, that’s why everything turned to shit. Humanity is cursed, doomed, and in the end, darkness will rule. You are so meaningles, how dare you even consider changing something?” I had already earlier gone to my cabin in order not to share my bad energy with the others, but this had been an unwise decision since everything was so narrow and closed up…

I went outside and talked to Hector, our guide. He called the Shaman, and the latter started to clean all the darkness out of me. This experience was, like the trip itself, something I had never thought to be possible before. I had my eyes closed and the Shaman had some kind of spirit alcohol and mapachos, pure tapacco cigarettes, with him. He started some kind of ancient chants and started spitting the alcohol first over himself for protection and then over me. What happened was amazing, all the feelings and pictures started to fall apart, they turned to ashes and evaporated. The most impressive about all this was that with my eyes closed, I could see the Shaman’s energy fields. They were not like colored chakras, but more like golden circles. There were older shamans or entities assisting him, and a triangle, like a pyramid and other signs with very old scriptures. I felt relieved immediately and thanked the Shaman for his assistance. He just smiled or even laughed a bit.

In the morning, we arrived in a little village where a lot of commerce is going on. We slept a bit and then went to the market to eat and drink something. The fruit juices are simply amazing, and against everything people say about drinking juices and buying food on markets, I didn’t have any kind of trouble with my stomach. I never had that at any point of the journey. We went to our destination with a smaller boat. Hector had built a huge temple with his Peruvian employees, we slept and ate there. There are a lot of details I could tell about the experience in this lot, how everything was grounding, how incredibly kind the Peruvians were, that the food was exceptional and the how blessed to experience nature in such a profound way. However, I will merely focus on the experiences I made with Sapo, Nunu and Ayahuasca.

The Peruvians had captured a Sapo frog and showed us how they retrieve the Sapo from the animal. The frog remained unharmed of course, since the Sapo is softly scraped off the frog’s skin with a small stick and then put on a piece of wood. I was burnt with a tiny stick twice in my right shoulder, then the Sapo was applied. After a few minutes, my heartrate went up, I felt very hot and a bit dizzy. My stomach felt weird, however, I didn’t have to vomit. I felt very weak and kinda sick, but after that had passed, I felt very powerful for the next few days.

The Nunu was being blown up my nostrils in order to clean things up in my head. There’s a sharp pain at first from the front to the back of the brain, but once that passes, one becomes very clear and has a razor sharp focus. Both Sapo and Nunu were used to cleanse our bodies before the Ayahuasca ceremonies.

The ceremonies started at 8pm and lasted for 4 to 5 hours. Before that, nothing is being consumed, not even water. Ayahuasca has a very earthy, bitter taste. Some people find the taste extremely challenging, I didn’t particularly care about it. We were all lying on matrasses while the Shaman was singing and watching over us. The experiences were very different for everyone and a lot harder to describe than the mushrooms. What I can say from the three ceremonies I did is this:

In the first ceremony, after about one and half or two hours, I started to feel the medicine. My stomach was grumbling, but unlike the others, I didn’t vomit a single time. I began to see little sparks in the dark, then there were signs and finally, everything became a very real experience. I began to see a huge golden wheel with ancient signs around it, like a chakra. Then I found myself in a room with a lot of green, plantlike. There was some kind of a machine, mixture between plants and metal that I stepped into. I was provided with some kind of an armor, except for my face. It was beautiful, seashell like white colored and probably very strong. It was an overall beautiful experience until I ran to the toilet to release what was in my stomach. Not by vomiting, though.

In the second experience, the bugs and creatures came back and there was something like a huge ancient snakelike thing with tentacles, like the mothership of all the little creatures. Everything went dark for very long, but I could feel that there was a battle inside my body between those little creatures and something else. In the end, all these animals that I had been disgusted by were dead and being sucked or dragged in by the snakelike sluggish creature. I finally saw the creature leaving my body downwards and suddenly had to run to the toiled again. Very effective, that stuff… It was during that night after the actual ceremony, when the Ayahuasca still had its effect on me, that I was shown that my subconscious was like a huge control center that could create anything outside by being managed accordingly inside. Hard to explain, but I was clearly shown that everything in my life that happens outside is being caused in one way or another by how my unconscious is acting. This, however is being influenced by the thoughts and feelings I let have their impression on the unconscious. That was a very powerful insight from the feeling side, since in one way or another, I knew or at least felt this already before.

In the final ceremony, one cup of Ayahuasca was enough for me. Before, I had been served two. This time, the experience was unlike everything before. Very strong, my body started vibrating like with Changa, and I could for the first time in my life see all my chakra points “come to life”. Then, some entities stared communicating with me. The Shaman, as I was told later, had watched very closely over us since at one point, some entities that tried to pull at my soul had been chased away by the Shaman. I still know the exact point and feeling, and I was very grateful that Shamans were present. Opening your third eye aint’ no game, and if you try Ayahuasca, do it at its source and with people you can truly trust and rely on. I was given instructions as how to open my third eye and as to how to call upon the entities again. They also showed me how to get my heart chakra’s energy into my hands so that I could do more healing work when giving massages etc. It was incredibly intense and I had a sense of deep understanding, like enlightened with a feeling of gratitude that I had seldom felt before.

I have never been the same person since these experiences. I feel as if Ayahuasca had cleaned fears, limiting beliefs and everything dark in me. There was a lot going on when I came back, a lot of challenges on many levels. But I have a feeling of “unfuckwithability” and complete fearlessness every day. I know that I can do whatever I want and I have more clarity in my life than ever before. I see through things that people do and say and I can see exactly who is good for me and who isn’t. What I had asked the plant to do for me actually happened. People and circumstances that do not serve me disappear and are being replaced by events and people that serve the purpose my heart desires.

One of the if not the most amazing experience in my life by far. Hardly able to fully describe it in words, but I can strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to experience true healing on the long term.

Zurich, Mai 2019

Florian F.
Attorney