Ayahuasca, the misunderstood Mother. Part 1

Cd. Juárez, Chih., México. 6^th April 2018.

I am slowly coming back to Earth from a Yagé ceremony, which was held in a ranch near Samalayuca, Chihuahua, Mexico. Our main guides were descendants of a sacred tribe of Colombia, the Cofanes. I had been waiting for this ceremony for a few weeks now and as the time got closer I got more and more nervous. I had done Peyote before and it was a really pleasant experience, but somehow I always felt that Ayahuasca, as the mother, was not going to be as soft and gentle as Peyote was with me. I felt it was going to suddenly slap me in the face, as mexican mothers are well known for doing 🙂 Jk.

However, I had no doubt that this was my time. When we booked our place, my best friend and I, I was still in India and I had a small doubt – “Should I?” My doubt was mainly because I wanted the experience to be as pure as it could be. I didn’t know the Shamans who would be guiding it, called “Taitas”, and I was not looking to experience Ayahuasca as a hallucinogen or anything like that, but as a sacred medicine for me to heal the depths of my inner being. With this doubt, I started my own ceremony, which I’ve been doing daily for 3 months now, since the day I was initiated in the Munay-Ki rites. In the middle of the ceremony I got a message from the event organizers re-assuring me that it was really an authentic one and that I was not going to regret it once I experienced it. I took this as my sign, because of the “coincidental” timing. The decision had been made; there was no turning back.

Within 4 days of being back home, I found myself in a space with about 60 women. It was a feminine circle, the first Yagé ceremony that has ever been organized in my city with women only. I had no specific intention except that of connecting deeply with myself. There weren’t a lot of instructions despite the fact that most of us were new to the medicine. I found myself judging a lot: “I would have done this this way, or this other way, they missed this, they missed that… blah blah”. After a while, I realized I was going to ruin my experience if I continued doing that. I’ve done that many times before in my life, and this time I was not going to allow my mind to sabotage me. So, I stopped. And I started to flow with whatever came and in any way it came. I was ready.

Feminine reunited.

The taking of Yagé started. We queued, waiting for our turn. It was like a paste, and it was given to us with a spoon directly into our mouths. In the queue I asked the woman behind me if she had done this before. She said yes, and asked if I had. I said no, so she told me: “Just ask her to treat you nicely”. And so I did, standing there in front of the spoon, waiting for me to open my mouth, I asked her to please PLEASE treat me good. I took the medicine. The taste was bitter, but bearable. They said if the taste was too much you could drink a tiny bit of water with it, but not too much so not to decrease the effect. I didn’t but I took my time to swallow, allowing it to go in little by little. When everyone finished the intake, the lights were turned off, as lighting also can cut the medicine. So there we were, in the dark, under the beautiful stars, finding a place to establish ourselves.

I was not near the fire, because the wind blew cold around there. My friend and I found a place behind a little house that was in the center of the space and we sat there, just waiting… I was sitting down, and my butt started to hurt from the hard floor, so after a while I lied down and snuggled in between my blankets.  I was really cold, and suddenly I feel asleep.

The voice of a man woke me up. It was one of the ones who were holding the space with music and songs. He came to announce the 2^nd intake of the medicine. I sat down thinking “I am not going”. Not because I was feeling bad or anything. In fact, I didn’t feel anything, but I was really very cold and I just wanted to sleep so I could forget about this harsh sensation. Some people went, some people stayed. I was still in between.

Suddenly, I became aware of what I was doing to myself. I was again willing to sabotage the experience, just because I couldn’t bear a little cold in my body. It was my first test. I was willing to sleep again, and then what? Wake up in the morning regretting that I didn’t feel anything because I didn’t even tried? I started to gain courage. I didn’t want to miss this. I just needed a little bit of a kick in the butt, but I realized I had to do that myself, because no one would do it for me. It was now entirely up to me. As a good Taurean, I thought of the money I paid for this, and it was the last thing that finally made me stand up and go!

When I was walking there I did it very cautiously because I felt I had to look and feel where I was putting my feet on. My walking had a different sensation as normal.

I reached the queue, which by now only had 1 person left. I got there at the last minute – it was the last chance. I stood in front of whom was holding the spoon in front of my mouth, and… I turned my face away (“damn it Laura, what are you doing?!”). I turned it back immediately, and I said to him: “Sorry, it’s just that I am starting to wake up just now”. I said this because exactly in that moment, I felt something was changing and waking up inside of me. The medicine was just kicking in. He said: “Ok, maybe I make it a little less” (which I appreciated!) and he reduced the amount. I opened the mouth and allowed it in, and immediately went straight to the area designated for vomiting. I was sure that I was not going to hold it in. One of the goals I had was NOT to vomit! It happens for me very easily, but I didn’t want it. In the last 7 months I have eaten meat maybe twice and since I reached home from India I had not gone straight for tacos (which of course was not easy :)) because I had very clear that I did not want to vomit due to intoxication of the physical. I wanted something more than that, something beyond a physical cleansing.

As soon as I reached the area, still with the medicine in my mouth (like a kid does) and salivating tremendously, I looked up at the moon and said to myself: “Ok, if I am to vomit, I take it. Here I go…” I gathered myself and without much thought I finally swallowed the whole thing at once. As soon as I did that, my sensation of wanting to vomit disappeared. Thank you God!

From there on, I didn’t go back to my comfort zone – the blanket zone. Something called me straight to the fire and I sat in front of it for the entire night.

And here it’s where the magic began…

Spirit animals waiting for the right moment.

Part 2 to be continued…

Life is better… Pictureless

28/Jul/15

Its 5.00 am in the morning and I haven’t been able to catch any sleep at all. I am in Greece, in the beautiful Greece trying to write a different ending to a love story that begun 2 and a half years ago. I don’t really know if this will be an ending though, we both don’t know – I think at least for this life it will. I also don’t know what it is what brought me here again. We are disastrous together, yet at the same time magic happens around us every time we are close to each other. The sky, the stars, the moon… they talk to us, they find a way to communicate with us and make us communicate between each other. I know it sounds ridiculous and unreal, but it is true.

The first time, the warmest sun brought us together in the most magical day in the city of Athens, on top of Philopappou Hill, where all the forces of the universe where working together, moving us in the direction where we will finally meet for the first time, once again.

The second time, a cold spring in London was easily bearable with the warmth that only a happy heart can bring, an unforgettable week which I can call without a doubt one of the bests in my life.

The third time, the stars where dancing above us in the beautiful Mylos in a way that I have never seen before. I sometimes think they were making fun of us, of our nonsense fights… telling us to wake up! to look at the important things and forget the unimportant.

The fourth time, exactly now, the moon witnesses our encounter, shining brightly and beautifully, illuminating Salamina’s sea and finding us sitting there, on a bench in front of the clearest waters I have ever seen, where even at night I could see the stones underneath.

This greek man and I… The same force that brought us together so strongly at the beginning is the same force that probably won’t let us remain this way. I can see this a little bit clearer now, but I don’t care. We don’t care. What we care about is that every time it happens, every time we meet, the moment is perfect – messy, but perfect. It’s funny because sometimes it seems like we were creatures from different species, two different worlds, cultures, beliefs, passions, language, everything. But no matter how many differences and opposite things I want to find between us, there is one important thing – the only important thing that matters, which is that we are the same soul, exactly the same, broken up into two, sent to different places and periods of time, and who where destined to meet again to change each other’s life forever and to be presented by the most scariest thing of all: A mirror – our own reflection in the other, our fears and desires, the worst of us (well, the worst of me at least), everything that most people are not able to see in us, that exactly is what we show to each other, inevitably, E V E R Y time.

However, humans are a weird race. We are prisoners, prisoners of ourselves. We act like if we have our heart inside a cell, and like that no one can live life fully. We are not able to enjoy ever second of the life we were granted because we don’t dare to unlock this cell, we don’t know how to, we are too scared – scared of showing who we really are to the world, scared of doing something that might not fit into the frame of other people’s mind or way of living.

How can I explain? … I will borrow a little story and it goes like this: Imagine that 2 strangers are sitting right now on this very same bench and they want to get to know each other better, BUT they have this picture of themselves, which they have created, and they are so scared to let this picture be destroyed in the eyes of the one sitting next to them, too scared to let them see that the picture has a little scratch, or maybe two, and that it may not be repairable. And instead of turning to each other saying: “Hello, nice to meet you, this is who I am”, they say “Hello, nice to meet you… wait a moment please” while they take their “perfect” pictures out from their pockets and show it to each other…

Yes, I am guilty too. And the worst is that I not only carry my own pictures but also pictures of how I think others should be 😦 Yes, I have several times played the role of the character from this unfortunate story that came from the mouth and the heart of a man who sees who I am and loves me, despite having showed him the very worst of me, the darkest side of my personality – that which even I cant accept of myself – but he does, because he doesn’t give a damn about pictures – he is beyond that.

Dr. Brian Weiss says that when two soul mates are reunited together for many lifetimes, the feelings and emotions between them can be SO intense that it might just be too much to take. They come to teach you probably the most important lessons of your life, but that doesn’t mean that you are destined to stay together, and exactly that is the most difficult thing to accept, because we have learned to be attached – but attachment is only human, because the soul knows when the lessons have been learnt and when its time to keep moving.

I ask the universe to set me free – I want to set myself free. Only then I will finally start living my life… Pictureless.

My teachers in Mysore – Part 1: Breath, my dancing partner

June 2015

My first time in Mysore and I was lucky enough to have fallen into good hands. Before coming here my plans regarding the teacher I would be practicing with were completely different; but on the process of emailing and investigating about the teachers here I realized that I have decided to come precisely on the months where most of them are away on tour. It’s a common thing and most of them will have specific dates they go away during the year but being new to all this I had no clue. Thankfully I got sooo many recommendations from people that I know who put me in contact with a friend or a friend of a friend who have been here, and that helped a lot! It’s incredible how the information just comes to you when you really really want it. Thank you everyone who helped:)

One of the teachers that came up on that list was M V Chidananda, a disciple of BNS Iyengar. I went to the web and started searching. Many of my decisions are based on my first gut feeling, even when choosing a wine – I don’t look at the price or the grape or the bottle, it’s something about the label calling me that I just know it will be good. Same as with this, I didn’t overstudy how recognized the teachers were or how many qualifications they had, I just knew that this one felt right and something said to me: Go for it!

M V Chidananda is a very good, knowledgeable and respectable ashtanga teacher in Mysore. He is a good man and he will always happily welcome you and guide you step by step in your practice regardless of your level. It’s so inspiring to see how much energy he puts into each of his students and on each and every single adjustment. He does really deep adjustments by the way, and I must say that before I secretly hated it (or maybe not that secretly). I thought that if you get adjusted too much, you wouldn’t be able to work hard enough as someone was kind of doing the job for you. And also I was really scared that one day one of those adjustments would injure me or break me into half. I was wrong! This is not necessarily true, especially if you have someone who can guide you safely. Being a stiff person myself I have to say I felt really very safe with him since day one – that kind of feeling where you completely surrender into whatever your teacher is doing and telling you to do. He genuinely wants to help you, he wants you to feel that part of your body you have never felt, even if it’s hard to get to. But you´re in good hands; he is intuitive enough to know where and when to stop without a word.

I didn’t open my mouth once during practice – he didn’t either. There was no need for it, the key was on breathing long and deep and moving with that, pretty much like a dance. Inhale…… Exhale…… It was a little magical.

Mysore Mandala, yoga shala in Lakshmipuram

I was practicing with him for a month, but one month, two months, three months… it’s never enough when you are seeing and feeling the results, you just want to keep doing it. I have never gone as deep in forward folds as I did here, nor have ever felt my hips and groin stretching this much. It was painful, but it’s a good kind of pain, the pain where you know that you’ve just found the exact place where the blockage is, and now you can focus and breathe into it. In the same way, I have never twisted my body in such a way that I could barely find my breath in between all that squeeze, it was intense. But he is always there.. to show you where your body can go, and you can count on full 5 long and deep breaths with him guiding you passionately, in a silence where only breath is allowed to be.

You come here to learn, to try new things, even if you think they look horrible and go against what you have learned before. Relax and forget about all these ideas you have in your mind about how good or how bad you look in a pose. You will be wasting your time because during this month I couldn’t find space for our little egos who sometimes are just waiting to come out. You are here to feel. You are trapped into this practice where there is no need to pretend anything at all. No one knows you, you don´t know anyone. Its just you and your practice, like it should be.

Namaste:)