Vibrant fractal images, mind blowing visions of your higher self, spirit animals, ancestors, mediums, spirits, conversations with GOD, the Universe, oneness, and talking plants.
Do any of these things sound familiar!?!
Mother Ayahuasca loves to bring everything to life, and give us massive downloads of spiritual insights to help us on our own journey.
It can sometimes be a little overwhelming to receive all of the information she gives us during ayahuasca ceremonies. That’s why integration is an essential phase of your ayahuasca journey.
Your ceremony is almost pointless if you don’t apply what the medicine is trying to teach you. This is the REAL WORK.
Ayahuasca wakes you up to your own self limiting beliefs and behaviors, and allows you to reprogram yourself with healthy habits in order to live a happier, more abundant life.
Ultimately, it’s up to you to do the work on yourself and take back responsibility for your life. You are creating your reality each day.
The post-ayahuasca ceremony integration process allows you to take on the role of a true spiritual warrior.
It is the perfect time to focus on sharpening your mind, body, and spirit so that you have the energy to make significant changes in your daily life. These are your primary weapons that you will take along with you to face any challenges that pop up throughout the day.
Applying what you learn from ayahuasca is crucial to your soul’s evolution. For this reason, I will present six practical exercises that you can use to integrate the valuable lessons that ayahuasca teaches you and transform your life.
1. Journaling
Right after ceremonies finish, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to take the time to journal about the insights you received.
The medicine unlocks answers trapped deep within your subconscious mind, and allows them to come to the surface. You become more aware of what’s always been within you.
Journaling can help you deepen your awareness and your connection with your intuition. By writing down what happened during the ceremony, you give yourself a chance to process all of the information and create a roadmap on how to proceed in the days, weeks, and months following the ceremony.
Instead of going to a doctor for a prescription medication or drug, all of the notes that you take while journaling, act as a guide to healing yourself.
Of course, you may receive insights to seek medical help or guidance from experts afterwards, but by this time you will have a better understanding of what you need versus what society has been telling you to do.
The process of journaling enhances your awareness, giving you the power to rewrite your story and make positive changes in your life.
Action Steps: Bring a journal with you to your ayahuasca ceremony and write in it after the ceremony finishes. Also, create the habit of journaling every day by scheduling 15 minutes to journal right after you wake up in the morning and 15 minutes at the end of the day.
2. Spend Time in Nature
We live in a world that’s full of different invisible waves flying and bouncing around us without noticing, constant stimulation, and social media, however we don’t exactly know what impact all of this energy has on our body and mind.
For this reason, it is important to spend time in nature following your ceremony. Nature serves as a balanced, healthy environment to ground yourself after spiritually lifting off into space.
When we spend time doing activities such as hiking, meditating, climbing, or swimming in nature we refresh ourselves and reconnect with our own inner nature.
It’s scientifically proven that spending about an hour in a forest can help you relax your mind, leaving you feeling rejuvenated. The sense of stillness that you feel while in nature can help you clear your mind of any feelings of post-ceremony anxiety and remind you of what really matters in your journey.
Action Steps: Try starting each day with a morning walk in the park or find a trail near your house to explore. On weekends, plan excursions where you spend at least 2 hours immersed in nature.
3. Exercise
A sedentary lifestyle (aka sitting too much) causes obesity and many different heart conditions. Unfortunately, many of us spend a majority of our days sitting at our computer working.
Exercise is a great way to improve our lives after an ayahuasca ceremony. Movement is the medicine that most of need to incorporate a bit more in our lives.
Instead of taking the elevator, we could take the stairs more often, or even stop being lazy and take the time to walk or bike to our destinations.
When you’re at work, take short breaks to walk around, breathe, stretch, and do some squats or pushups. This not only helps you in the long run, but you will instantly feel the rush of endorphins into your body, which will make you feel good.
When you’re not working it’s extremely helpful to find activities that help you turn off your mind and get back into your body such as working out at the gym, dancing, sports, swimming, or jogging.
These are all simple answers that have been told to us throughout our lives, but it’s surprising how many people actually live an active lifestyle.
We’ve traded real life experiences for time on screens, and the consequences have been unforgiving to our personal health.
Action Step: Schedule 30 minutes either in the morning before work or in the evening after work to move your body. Suggestions for activities: High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) at the gym or at home, yoga, take a walk, go for a run, dance, swim, play basketball or soccer.
Here are a few apps that I recommend:
Johnson & Johnson 7 Minute Workout App - creates custom High Intensitiy Interval Training (HIIT) workouts for you to follow with body weight exercises
Down Dog App - provides top-notch guided yoga videos that you can use to target areas of your body that are feeling tight
4.Meditate
This may be the most important practice to integrate into your daily life once you start drinking ayahuasca or even before your first ceremony.
Practicing meditation will not only help you handle your ayahuasca trips better, but it will also benefit you immensely if you do it in between ceremonies.
Sitting with your thoughts and emotions on a daily basis prepares you to handle unexpected situations throughout the day without being so reactive to what’s going on.
Naturally, life can put you into uncomfortable situations where you may have to bring up a difficult conversation at work, face sickness, or make a decision on the spot.
In that moment, you can freeze up and avoid the challenge or go straight at it and confront the situation. Meditation reduces the habit of reacting purely off of emotion.
Over the long run, you’ll make better decisions that will benefit your future self instead of being purely spontaneous.
Each time you meditate you also increase your awareness as you observe the thoughts going through your mind. You may drift off into different thoughts, but one of the goals of meditation is to always return to a relaxed state in the present moment, no matter where your thoughts lead you.
I primarily use my breath, gratitude, and sounds to anchor myself to the here and now whenever I’m lost in a repeating thought loop.
With your breath, you can focus on inhaling deeply and feeling your lungs with fresh oxygen. This sensation can help be more present with your body, instead of drifting away with thoughts that are running through your mind.
Gratitude is another great anchor to the present moment. Think of the many blessings of life to be thankful for such as your friends, family, opportunities, food, water, shelter, and nature. These simple pleasures can bring us to appreciate the present moment and each moment in the past that led to where you are at now.
Sounds are also a great tool for presence. If you are meditating in nature, you can choose a sound to focus on and listen deeply to. Listen to the sounds of birds chirping, the trees bristling in the distance, the wind as it brushes your ears, and the wild movement of the waves as they break along the beach. The frequencies of nature allow us to ease into presence without any resistance.
Meditation is not only a way to help you be more present. It is a really useful practice that can help you reduce stress, improve focus, and relax your body.
During the day, we are constantly bombarded by stimulation from our environment, cell phones, and computers. Therefore, it is crucial to take time out of your day to remove yourself from all of the madness and do nothing at all.
By simply sitting and observing your thoughts for a few moments in your day, you will be able to calm the chatter going through the mind and focus on what really matters in the present moment.
At first when you try meditating, you may feel bored or anxious. These are normal emotions that arise when you begin to sit in silence.
Realize that your body is almost like a programmed machine. Over time it’s developed habits and used to experience different emotions during different periods of the day.
For example, you may have the habit of beginning each day by checking your phone, social media, and the news, which makes you feel frustrated with what’s going on in the world.
It would then be completely natural to feel this same emotion when you sit down and try to meditate in the morning instead of checking your phone. The test is to sit and observe those same emotions that you are programmed to feel until you’re able to allow it to pass.
Once the wave of emotions pass, you can replace programmed emotions with whatever you want to cultivate in your life. This could be a sense of peace, love, happiness, kindness, compassion, gratitude, joy, or any beneficial quality of your choice.
There are a number of benefits of meditation that are now being scientifically documented and proven. Even though we know that meditation is good for us, it’s not the easiest habit to form.
Here are some tips:
If you want to make meditation a daily habit, don’t make your goal too hard for you to achieve when you are just starting off. According to research on flow states, your target should be about 4% above your current skill level. That way you feel challenged enough not to feel bored, yet your goal is within the reach of your current abilities.
There are also meditation apps such as Insight Timer that can help you track the days which you meditate and the amount of time you meditate for. They even have guided meditation recordings and courses which can teach you different techniques of meditation.
Action Step: Schedule 10 minutes in the morning and/or before bed to meditate each day using the Insight Timer app. Once you establish the habit of meditating daily, you can gradually increase the amount of time you spend meditating per session.
5. Explore Creativity
Ayahuasca can reveal some out of the world visions to you. If you don’t know how to express what you experienced in your ceremony, make art out of it.
I love to write poetry because it’s my way of explaining the ineffable. This beautiful present called life that we have the opportunity to experience.
If poetry is not really your thing, you could paint, draw, create songs, or start a business inspired by ayahuasca.
One of the powers of the medicine is its ability to unlock your creativity energy. You’re able to think outside of the box, and provide better solutions to the problems that you’re facing.
The world becomes full of different possibilities to explore, and once you start stepping outside of your comfort zone, you’ll see there are a lot opportunities waiting for you that support your growth as a human being.
Action Steps: If you feel called to express your artistic abilities, spend time on the weekends getting lost in a creative project of your choice. Honor this project with its own sacred space to channel the emotions you felt and visions you saw during your ayahuasca ceremony.
6. Love Yourself
A lot of people are talking about self love these days. Learning how to love myself after drinking ayahuasca was a major part of my own personal growth.
We all have a desire to contribute to society, our friends, and family. Having a sense of purpose or meaning is extremely important, but before we give love to others we need to be able to fill ourselves up with love first.
It’s absolutely essential for us to love and accept ourselves, before attempting to serve others. We need to be fit to serve. Take care of ourselves first, then serve others from the abundance of love that resulted from this process.
Loving yourself means prioritizing your sleep so that you have more energy to give to the world, nourishing your body with healthy, delicious food, exercising, stretching, drinking water, not being too self-critical, and committing to daily rituals that mean something to you. These are just a few ways to practice self love.
Another significant part of loving yourself is learning to accept some of your flaws and imperfections. No matter who you are, remember that we are all human.
We all have a shadow, or a past that we are ashamed of showing to the world.
It’s ok to make mistakes. Nobody is perfect. Even those that are deep in their spiritual path have times when they slip up and regress on their journey.
Spiritual growth is far from linear. It’s a bumpy roller coaster, so you better hold on for the ups and downs that come with choosing this journey.
Action Steps: Every morning commit at least 30 minutes to loving yourself before starting your day. You can show your love for yourself by drinking a cup of tea, stretching your body, taking a warm shower, eating a nice breakfast, taking a walk, or however you prefer to love yourself. Occasionally, schedule time to go to a spa or sauna, get a massage, treat yourself to a fancy dinner, or take a trip that you have been thinking about.
7. Share Your Story
The final way to integrate the lessons from ayahuasca is to share your story of transformation with the people you encounter, friends, and family. The lifestyle changes that ayahuasca can help you make have a ripple effect of positivity wherever you go.
When you share your experiences with the medicine, you also inspire others to learn more about its benefits. Most importantly when you lead by embodying the lessons that ayahuasca teaches you, others recognize your energy and become curious about the way you live.
You can naturally influence the people around you just by sharing your energy with them. Embodying the medicine allows your actions to speak for themselves as you become the change you wish to see in the world.
In my opinion, the most beautiful part of the ayahuasca journey is hearing each person’s unique experience with the medicine. Sharing alone has its healing benefits.
So don’t be afraid to share your ayahuasca stories with people, and if this article has helped you make sure to share it with friends and family that are interested in understanding the ayahuasca journey.
Deepen Your Connection With Ayahuasca
Integration may be the most critical phase of the journey to heal yourself with ayahuasca. Since your ability to apply what you learn helps you grow faster, this stage of the ayahuasca journey shouldn’t be taken lightly.
After your ceremony, it’s extremely beneficial to understand what your body and mind needs in order to return to the normal world without losing the healing effects of the medicine. Allow your intuition to guide you to the practices that will help you the most such as journaling, meditation, or exercise.
Forming healthy habits is the key to seeing long-term improvements with your wellness and happiness in life. As you make progress with these new habits, you may feel called again to experience another ceremony or your first dieta in order to deepen your connection with Mother Ayahuasca and strengthen the habits you’ve already formed.
If you feel this call to deepen your connection with the medicine, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Feel free to send us an email to contact@anishinan.org or WhatsApp message to +41 78 628 86 19 (Marco Fischer) to schedule a call and create your custom ayahuasca experience in Peru. A new adventure is waiting for you in the jungle of Peru! See you soon!