Category

Dieta

Mapacho: King of Plants AyahuascaDietaPersonal ExperienceTeacher Plants

Mapacho: King of Plants

Ayahuasca use in the Amazon is embedded within a wider tradition of plant science called vegetalismo, and the most important and revered of all plants is tobacco—specifically, mapacho (Nicotiana rustica), a variety that is up to 26 times stronger than that used in commercial cigarettes. The ritual traditions surrounding mapacho are far more ancient than ayahuasca. Some say it was the tobacco spirit that taught humans how to use ayahuasca. Mapacho is considered the master plant of Amazonian healing traditions,…
Jun 23, 2021
what ayahuasca teaches
What Ayahuasca Has Taught Me AyahuascaDietaPersonal Experience

What Ayahuasca Has Taught Me

Entering my seventh year of relation with ayahausca, I've been musing on how it's shaped me, and what I've learned. What I've learned not just in passing, but for keeps—teachings that have been permanently tattooed on my being through my personal work with the medicine, and also the whole excruciating, beautiful process of plant dieta (more on that here and here). Here are three deep knowings that ayahuasca y las plantas have installed in my being: 1). We Belong to…
Mar 29, 2021
DNA, ancestors and ayahuasca
Ancestors or Past Lives? AyahuascaDietaPersonal ExperienceTrauma

Ancestors or Past Lives?

Ayahuasca leads us through subterranean memories, down into primal dungeons where we’ve locked away parts of ourselves. These are not just personal recollections, but the ancient, rejected secrets of our species (ayahuasca works with the species, not just the individual), which need to come into the light to be released. It’s not unusual to have ayahuasca visions from another place and time. Sometimes these rise up from the land itself, as in my first ceremony, when I was greeted by…
Nov 20, 2019
How Dieta Rewires Your Being DietaPersonal ExperienceSocietyTeacher Plants

How Dieta Rewires Your Being

During my last half-dozen or so plant dietas, I’ve been experiencing a phenomenon I call ‘unfolding.’ It has something to do with the way my normal life, much of which is spent staring at a laptop screen, flattens my perception, collapsing my sense of dimensionality. Technically speaking, you might say I suffer from an overemphasis on the mono-focus of the left brain, at the expense of the holistic vision of the right. What’s interesting is how I find dieta to…
Apr 29, 2019
Ayahuasca Obfuscada AyahuascaDietaIntegrationPersonal ExperienceTeacher Plants

Ayahuasca Obfuscada

Work with Amazonian plantas maestras or teacher plants is almost always enlightening, but the process can be confusing, too. The language of plants is not exactly straightforward or clear-cut. They speak to us in non-verbal ways, through images and sensations that can be vague, diffuse, difficult to understand. Plant teachers move at a different pace than our harried everyday minds, a pace that’s organic, slow and grounded, growing from what came before and connecting with what is in ways we…
Jan 12, 2019
Dieta Diary DietaPersonal ExperienceTeacher Plants

Dieta Diary

I’ve been doing a series of plant dietas under the guidance of a curandero in the Peruvian Amazon. Every few months I fly into Iquitos, catch a moto out to Enrique’s place, and commence a retreat with whatever plant he’s chosen for me this time. Dieta involves drinking an extract of a particular ‘teacher plant’ (planta maestra) while living in seclusion and eating little and simply. It’s the traditional way to develop a personal relationship with these invisible yet potent…
Feb 15, 2017