(Re)integration, a process that takes ‘time’

I am a bit hesitant as how to describe my first Ayahuasca experience because it has been quite tedious to explain to some of my family members, friends or coworkers without receiving judgement and feeling hyper aware of what I subjected myself to. That being said, wow, blessed Mother of Plants, blessed her and her powerful healing nature in me, thank you for resetting my whole system. I also don’t want to sound crazy, obsessed or pretentious, but life has, in fact, been different, since we ‘consecrated’. Literally, I feel like what Christians say about having Jesus or God in your heart, has been inserted in all my cells through plant medicine.

We were so lucky to receive it from the hands of Maria Valdivia and her daughter Kusiy right here in the street Calle Conga where we live, in Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica. We are surrounded by the sound of cicades, trees and plants of all sorts, stars, birds, and all the tropical creatures you can imagine. I was so nervous of bringing in my partner and I did spend a good time or what it felt like aware of her trip, her healing and her process, which I later resented, but now I have let go. I am so proud of the changes the plant helped her bring to her life. She quit alcohol, texted her sister whom she hasn’t talked in a decade and restarted that relationship, and soon will do the same with her dad. She is a different person. Her job is going well and she walks with so much confidence it’s impressive.

My process is very different, I am hyper aware of my traumas and still integrating, working with a wonderful integration coach, restarted boxing with a sweet guy who is teaching me ‘gentleness’ within movement. I am easily triggered by people, comments that hit me wrong I can respond back, and still trying to find my presence in my power and my self. Shit with my older sister is hard, she might be pregnant. I try to meditate, journal and breathe in the mornings but it is not always possible. Surely the Universe is telling me to quit caffeine. It’s so freaking sad and hard. Some relationships seem old and heavy and I have to cut. I really have to find a way to believe in myself and my potential. I don’t know how. Right now. I know the answers will come in due time but wow, tons of homework.

So, it all started Saturday 21st of February in Soul Sync Sanctuary in Calle Conga at 4:00 PM. We sat around the deck in a circle and I meant to sit separate from my partner but couldn’t. I wanted to bring a picture of my inner child but left it at home. I brought a little Shipibo fabric and put my necklace, I was unsure of how the dynamic works during Aya ceremonies honestly, some friends said ‘Sit upright’, ‘Ask her to be gentle’. The first I did, I received the medicine with all it’s might, the second I did not do and received a full blast of pain. We slept poorly the night before me and my partner were fighting, something we did for a year and a half and something that Aya changed and is changing. I remember pain in my knees, in my left neck, in my vertebrae.

Kusiy the daughter of the chaman Maria started speaking when the sky gave us rainfall, atypical to February in Costa Rica. Maria es Chilean and a medicine woman who resides in Ibiza as part of the Vision Quest. Next to her were Callista and Antonia, two Eagle women which I love. Callista is the owner of Soul Sync a very charming happy American who hosts retreats and laughs like an eagle, actually. Antonia is going to be our new neighbor and is also American and happy and charming and just plain powerful. They are from the South of the US and they work and pray to the culture of the Earth and the Sky, tobacco, peyote and so forth.

I had participated in a temazcal with Kusiy twice and loved it. I feel respect for her bringing this healing to this part of Costa Rica at this time, and for bringing her mom to bring the medicine. Albano his husband is also part of the ritual and the hosting and he was sitting to my right. I bought a surfboard from him at least 10 years ago, a tattoo artist, tall, white, full of art in his body, a patient Argentinean, whose words during the temazcal and the ayahuasca hit my heart. The voice of Argentina, where my mom and grandmother comes was also represented by Juancho, who passed out around the second or third hour of the ceremony, and Maria had to revive him.

It was extremely intense and I still don’t understand and am trying to find the words to describe. I was hype aware of my partner and her pain, her behavior, her exchange with others. I was also self conscious we did not bring dress or skirt but rather pants. I was unsure how to sit, breathe or act. The circle started with blessing and prayers around tobacco smoking. We each had one and we puffed and contributed blessings and intentions. I had trouble speaking. I meant to share my experience of seeing the plant the day before in a patient’s house, saying some seemingly deep shit like ‘it all happens for a reason’.

Ayahuasca is really deep, deeper than words, deeper than what the brain can interpret. Ayahuasca penetrates every cell and clears it all out. She speaks the language of nature the language of the sky and the language of God. She can communicate with us but there is no real way to interpret this magic in this 3D world. We had the fortune of integrating at Envision Festival where the art gallery was full of Abuelas and Abuelos, jaguars, serpents, butterflies, hummingbirds, and yes, maybe art is one way the humans can describe her, but wow, not really, no words no art can paint what she does to your body, mind and spirit. Sure, it’s cleansing, sure, it’s painful, sure it’s a teacher, but wow, she goes beyond this plane and all the other ones. It’s wild to think that a plant has come to the planet in this very moment to wake us up.

After the tobacco smoking which felt hard for me, Adri kept passing the lighter and I was just shaking, trying to light it up, inhale and clean. Then they follow with a round of ‘rapé’ or liquid tobacco in a little bottle and dropper, I assume they don’t blow it because of simplicity. Rapé on my left side fucked me up, I had paper and blew my nose, it really hurt. Then, Kusiy gave us an ayahuasca shot one by one and mine tasted sweet, unsure where they brought it from but again, wow, we are some lucky ones out here receiving such pure medicine. I had a bit of nausea and desire to go number two but didn’t do it. Adri did go to the bathroom at some point. I was sitting, waiting, feeling pain in my body for what felt for two or more hours. I don’t know what hapenned first, Juancho passing out or me self aware and conscious about Adri and her journey. At some point I looked at Albano and Adri and their eyes were blue neon and green.

I let myself go back and lay on my back, with a lot of body pain, neck, back, hips, dry tongue, again, self aware of the whole thing. I had a visual but maybe it was a real thing, of a dark empty space and my body floating, my soul right above, and then the Infinity, God or Creation. The three layers. Then I felt emptiness and time was fully broken. There was no time. Not even space. I had a very brief glimpse of Maria orchestrating through the 3D with her hands. As we were puppets. At some point I felt possessed. Like the Harry Potter movies the thing was holding on to my body my soul and I was on the floor kind of in pain, very uncomfortable, wanting to let lose but also wanting to let go.

I have no idea if it’s 6:00 PM or 10:00 PM but I am above Iguazú Falls and mind you these are not visuals, these are memories in time in my brain but in my soul too. I am with my grandmother and my brother, as it was the last time I believe 2014 when she refused to go to the last waterfall ‘Garganta del Diablo’ because it reminded her of my passed away grandfather. I could see her pain of losing him and also the protection he provided their whole life.

I also had this memory visual of Pino, the white pitbull that passed away last year which whom I wanted to play. We were in my house back in Escazú and it was one night that I refused to go out with some friends. I stayed in the computer in the wooden desk my mom gave me working on my thesis, no swiping, no compulsive validation, no stress, just me feeling my genius, my white dog giving me love and being love. It was lovely to have him bring me to the specific moment in time, were I felt so rich within myself, so free.

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It’s not been two months and I am still integrating, still wanting to write the rest of this article. What is new? I made more money, moved to a house in front of a river with my partner and our dogs, got super sick of the stomach, came back, and yeah, lost track of the whole thing. ‘Integration’ is not linear. Moving out of my old house in Escazú and Adri moving out of her place in Alajuela and both moving into this new house together was and is a whole process. The parasites in me plus antibiotics also took a crazy toll on my physical energy. Surely we went through this step by step thing where you took things or ingested substances after the ceremony and She was telling you ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or ‘be careful’.

Surely everything felt new, neurogenesis or neuroplasticity might be the titles used, but who knows, it felt like my frontal lobe did not want to trick me those first weeks. I was very present, I was very in the moment and things (despite emotions being heavy here and there) were flowing. They are still flowing, but I am more in the ‘I gotta do’, ‘I need to finish’, ‘can’t wait for next week’, spiral monkey mindset. I continue to meditate daily and I have lost the habit of journaling.

Last week we did a Temazcal with Kusiy and in some ways it helped me integrate more (given some of the people in the ceremony where there). I had felt a presence the first few nights in the new house but it seemed kind. Adri said it was feline. One night I got super scared and I asked Antonia my neighbor, property manager and also part of these healer women and she said to use rosemary and owls (luckily I had some statues). I think my spirit animal is a Jaguarundi, a small puma that can look like an otter. It’s playful, it’s femenine and it comes with me.

I am feeling confident as rainy season approaches, finally back in my body, boxing, surfing, with more energy. I hope to write more soon.

April 8, Quebrada Amarilla, riverfront