My Third Ayahuasca Retreat

Day 1

This retreat was about 30km outside of Munich. As usual is was out of the way enough so that the unearthly wails of the participants could not be heard by the normies, going about their days. It was a small house relative to the other retreats I have attended. There were only 6 participants to begin with. A few people left and joined throughout the weekend as is customary at such events. There were no spare bedrooms for participants and we just slept in the facilitation room. It was a very nice room however. The house was essentially a bungalow for the normal rooms with a large facilitation room on top of the house. Two of the three facilitators were resident in the house, so everything was set up ready for sessions, and there were lovely little messages scattered throughout the house.

Unlike other retreats where booster doses were standard, the main facilitator at this retreat said he would only be giving boosters to those who asked.

As night fell and the session began, I drank my first dose and lay down in wait. As mentioned on my previous blog, I had set my intentions on dealing with my perceived issues of the lower chakras. Nothing really happened for about an hour after the first dose, The facilitator offered a second dose to anyone requiring one. I was up to claim my medicine without hesitation.

Again, the process seemed slow, but I was quite content and not impatient. I had been wondering whether one does not get so many visions having taking multiple doses of Ayahuasca. But then about an hour and a half later, I had some pleasant visions. There were lots of silver sparkles throughout the backdrop of my closed eyes. They somehow came together to make this beautiful industrial looking machine. I didn’t know how to interpret this.. or whether I even needed to. Usually the message from Ayahuasca is very clear, but this was somehow more cryptic. It quickly dissipated, however, and was replaced by green and red sparkles coming in from my closed eyes’ peripheral vision at all angles.

When the sparkles passed, my hands once more developed their own consciousness and began to work on my lower torso, my sexual energy. There was a lot of massaging around the pubic bone initially. I could feel how congested my lymphatics in this area were. Lymphatic massaging is a fix used in Kinesiology, so I knew what was going on. As ever, I was purging unwanted energies through my breath, but it seemed to be a very mild purging. I have noticed in previous sessions that when I purge through the breath more heavily, more of a shrieking sound is emitted.

The work did not last a long time, however, and it felt as if there was nothing left there to do, and yet I was sure that there was. I was highly stimulated from the brew on this night, but somehow I didn’t seem feel the spirit of the vine within me. I did however finish the rest of the evening with a beautiful overhang of the love and light I had experienced on the last two nights of the previous retreat, which I was very grateful for.

As has been the case for my entire Ayahuasca history, I could not sleep immediately after the process. Usually I sleep for a few hours in the early afternoon.

Day 2

I ended up not bothering to sleep, so I was pretty tired going into the second night of Ayahuasca. Tonight the facilitator offered Yopo instead of a second dose of Ayahuasca. I had a kind of knowing that this is something that I wanted to do tonight. I had tried it once before seven years ago with a friend, rather unprofessionally, with just some instructions and a few accounts from Erowid to show me the way. I had bought some Yopo seeds off the internet and cut them up with the required alkaline substance to release the alkaloids. We had snorted the resulting mixture as if it were cocaine. The lines were at least 5 inches long. So big in fact, that they barely managed to fit up our nostrils. I had a particularly unpleasant experience outside of time, my friend an even worse one. Although we did both enjoy the afterglow that followed.

I drank my first brew, and laid down after it had transgressed my stomach. I actually then fell asleep because I was so tired. I awoke to the abrupt sound of one of the facilitators unplugging the audio jack of the stereo equipment from his phone. For a moment I was disorientated. I was feeling something from the brew, could barely remember how much time had passed or what had happened. Additionally the primary facilitator was performing some kind of shamanic ritual - emitting sounds while beating his chest. I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on! I was slightly discombobulated and a little scared, but caught up with myself quickly enough to get back on track.

Shortly afterwards there was some more work I did on my lower torso, but again, this seemed to grind to a halt prematurely, and before I knew it I felt “sober” again.

I wondered about the yopo once more. It contains a mixture of DMT and 5-ME0-DMT, a combination of the ingredients of Ayahuasca and Bufo Alvarius, but not exactly with the combined result of both. They say you live out your past characters when you consume it. I had also witnessed somebody on the previous retreat having an unpleasant experience. So I was very apprehensive about having it again, but all the signs pointed to this being the right thing to do.

I went down to the toilet and upon my return requested the Yopo from the facilitator. He sat me down and explained to me to sit on the end of my mattress on the floor with my hands on my head to contain its energy for at least half an hour. He explained the whole process usually takes a couple of hours.

He filled the pipe with the Yopo and projected it up each of my nostrils. It felt a little harsher than a rapé. For the next 10 minutes or so I saw bright coloured sparkles in the field of vision of my shut eyes. The purging bucket was placed directly in front of me. It is expected that there is a lot of purging. Indeed, I remember on my first Yopo experience it seemed to be endless. I waited but it never seemed to come. After the 10 minutes had passed I saw a beautiful tapestry of psychedelic tapestry. Purples, yellows, reds, blues and greens.

It was at this moment one of the facilitators sat beside me with her shamanic drum, and began to beat away. Her drumming had been a unique feature of this particular retreat that I had rather enjoyed. It seemed to have a positive effect on several of my and the other participants’ processes. The beat began slow before speeding up to a crescendo and then slowing down and grinding to a halt. It lasted for about 10 minutes or so I think. Just before she finished I felt that I needed to experience some unconditional love, so when she did I turned round to my side where she sat and opened my arms to embrace her, smiling. She duly obliged. We must have been hugging for 10 seconds or so when I felt something in my throat. I turned around and picked up the bucket to spit in it, still embracing in the hug. I was disappointed about how it was ruining a beautiful moment. Then I felt a big shift of energy from further down. I quickly disengaged to get into the vomiting position as a large amount of purge escaped me. It was dark red, I had no idea where that came from. The other two facilitators chuckled. So did I. I removed the bag from the bucket, tied it up and threw it in the dustbin at the side of the room. “Thank you, I love you. Goodbye!”

Strangely, this seemed to be the end of my Yopo process. It had only lasted for about half an hour. My Ayahuasca process seemed to return shortly afterwards though. I spent some more of the evening stretching and untangling my body from the usual knots it gets itself into which felt relieving. I really did have a relatively quiet night again though.

Day 3

The brew really kicked in on the third night from the first dose. I felt the spirit of the vine within me. I let go of the control of my body and just allowed everything to happen automatically. The hand healing that hadn’t done very much and basically given up during the first two nights went into full swing. Digging right in deep in the same kinds of areas. At times I knew my hands were hitting a sweet spot (a meridian point or something maybe), as I felt an intense sensation of energy both at the location I was healing and synchronistically in my third eye.

As I worked on myself releasing energy, the shrieking noises on my outbreaths came back again - I knew that I was releasing a lot of energies I had accumulated from traumas and bad experiences over the years. This continued for a long duration, and this time I was satisfied with the outcome. I felt light around that area as I had done around my chest on the previous retreat, so I knew I’d had a successful purge.

It was the last evening so there was a lot of bashfulness, laughing, and talking among the other participants, but it did not bother me. Sometimes I joined in. I could go back into my process as and when I pleased, so it seemed. I did some further work on my core - allowing my inner spirit to lift my spine up off the mattress and twist itself back into more natural configurations. The facilitator saw me and helped me out with her drumming. I released more energy through my breath, but it was a lot gentler - no shrieking this time.

I did not require a booster dose. The spirit of the Ayahuasca had been in me for the duration of the night. Nothing else was required.

I had suspected to go deeply into my fears this weekend, but in actuality it never happened. Maybe there is little fear left within me - or maybe it will seep out of me another time when I least suspect it!