Healing And Transformation, First Hand Experience With Ayahuasca || Allan

[00:00:01] RR Now, and it's good to be back as always. Welcome to the unique human experience. This is Giants amongst us where we share in that unique human experience. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on wherever it is you call home

[00:00:52] and at whatever time you happen to be listening to this episode. I hope you guys are doing well. If this is your first time tuning in, kick your feet up. Please do stay a while and know that what you will be hearing are stories,

[00:01:07] real stories from real people, people just like yourself. These stories, they come from a lot of different places. They come from hurt. They come from pain. They come from past trauma, child abuse, addictions. But these stories, they also show transformation. They show a rebirth in new beginnings.

[00:01:26] They show changes in attitude and behaviors and lifestyles and their examples to anybody right now listening who thinks there is no more hope. They just don't know what to do and they don't even want to do anymore.

[00:01:41] Listen to these stories and be reminded that your life is worth it, that your life has meaning and things can in fact get better. Know that. And today, Alan joins us and he's got a story to tell.

[00:01:56] For Alan growing up, it didn't exactly look like that old TV show Leave It The Beaver. Both of his parents were alcoholics. He said his mother when he was a child was she was in and out of mental institutions.

[00:02:09] She had her own psychological issues and something that really, really damaged him and knocked them flat was when his brother was killed in a farming accident. Alan was only going into the first grade when this happened. And he said after that it was as if he checked out.

[00:02:26] He remembers going into the first grade and then coming out in the fourth. It wasn't only until later on, he learned about the disassociative disorder and with the loss of his brother and the alcoholism in his household.

[00:02:41] It wasn't that long before Alan started to develop his own habits and took to the booze. All this happening to Alan early on in his life. But that was just the beginning of his story. Because Alan, he's going to take us on a journey.

[00:02:55] He's going to share with us his quest and his reasons for wanting to explore the human condition in one of the main ingredients that helped him along the way was a plant known as ayahuasca.

[00:03:08] Now, there might be some people listening who, like myself, had a few questions about it. Unsure about it. There's a lot of stigma behind the plant, but in some parts of the world, it's something that is often used.

[00:03:21] And Alan is going to talk about its effectiveness with helping with addiction, with recovery, with people who have medical conditions and a lot of the long term benefits that have been studied, researched and documented with people who have undergone these type of ceremonies.

[00:03:40] So I'd like to invite everybody to listen to this conversation with an open mind. And if this is something that you're interested in, you can do your own diligent research. The information is out there. Don't just think after watching one documentary or listening to one interview,

[00:03:55] you know it all and come to a conclusion. So ladies and gentlemen, let's just get right into it without further ado. This is Alan and his story. OK, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show.

[00:04:08] This is Giants Amongst Us, a place where we share in a unique human experience and I'm I'm excited and pleased to have another guest and another sit down. I'd like to welcome Alan to the show. Alan, thank you so much for taking time out of your day.

[00:04:23] I know you have things going on over there. You're a busy man. You're you're doing a good work. And so thank you for taking time out of your day to spend and share a little bit of story. Appreciate it. How's it going? Good, good, good.

[00:04:35] And happy to be here, Richard. It's one of my favorite topics. So, you know, I'm glad you're doing the show and happy to be here. Absolutely. Yeah, I can tell. And we had a good we had a good conversation before we started recording.

[00:04:49] And so it's only right that we go ahead and and get some of this on tape now. So yeah, man, for starters, how about how about you just talk a bit about where you come from and how it was for you growing up? Sure. Yeah, yeah. No problem.

[00:05:04] I'm 57 Chevy. Classic. Yeah, I'm a classic. I was raised in a little windswept, cold, aspery town, a way of Saskatchewan, small town, 10,000 people. My mother and father were both alcoholics. My mother was in and out of mental clinics when I was, you know,

[00:05:30] psych mental hospitals when I was growing up. It wasn't exactly what you'd call, you know, leave it to be very bad. But then when when I was just before I started grade one, my oldest brother got killed in a farming accident.

[00:05:50] My dad was driving a tractor and that was the single biggest tragedy, you know, on top of the rest of the chaos of an alcoholic household. And I went into grade one and I woke up in grade four. It's something called dissociative disorder,

[00:06:06] which I've just found out about recently, like within the last two or three years. So, you know, and, you know, and really honestly, it was just my normal. You know, I mean, it was just I mean, that's all I knew right a year,

[00:06:21] a kid growing up. And so by the time I was 14, I started to have my first beer. I was I was already an alcoholic, you know, alcohol, drugs, you know, I was like a petty criminal, I guess, peddling drugs and stuff like that.

[00:06:35] And anyway, so I sobered up 29 years old and I said, you know, I isn't going to kill me. I'm going to die if I keep up this kind of a lifestyle. So I quit the drugs and the alcohol and said, wow, there, there we go.

[00:06:49] I'll be good now. Yeah. OK, what about the emotional hangover? So anyway, through the rest of my life, you know, through 30 some years, I had this obsessive need to know about the human condition. And later when I read about dissociative disorder,

[00:07:10] that's a known characteristic of people with dissociative disorder is that, you know, you have this driving need to understand humanity, the human systems, that sort of thing. And plus I was a journalist. That was my original training and worked in the mainstream media,

[00:07:26] worked for government, saw this stuff. And I mean, even back then I I lasted. OK, so you work from behind the curtain? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen how it all worked. Wow. And, you know, it's disgusting. Were you part of the Ministry of Truth? Yeah, yeah.

[00:07:44] Well, basically, I mean, the Regina Leader Post, which was a newspaper record. I was an editor there and I lasted two and a half years there. And I said, you know, all we're doing, you know,

[00:07:54] and I wasn't able to frame it in, you know, how it can now. But back then I was like, Jesus, all I am doing, you know, freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. So back then, if if you wrote a pro-union story,

[00:08:10] for example, at that paper, you're on your way out. I mean, there was rules and nothing overtly stated. Everybody just knew what the rules were, right? So so I got got that. And then I worked for the provincial government as an information officer.

[00:08:24] I worked everywhere from, you know, the guys in the field right up to assistant deputy minister's office. And I saw that nasty political stuff and the control that the bureaucracy has and the deputy ministers have over what actually goes on within that department.

[00:08:47] Anyway, I got disgusted with that. It lasted four and a half years there. Left a good pension or shit like that. Started my own business and was fairly successful at that. But always with this need to know this like what that human condition? Well, what about the human?

[00:09:07] You know, what is this? What is this place? You know, so by the time I was 59, I was divorced, you know, second divorce. And it was like, what is this? And I have some background in film and television production.

[00:09:24] And so a friend, an editor friend of mine said, you know, have you ever heard about this ayahuasca stuff? As soon as he said that word ayahuasca, something just clicked in my head and I knew right then at that point

[00:09:39] that I would be doing it like without a doubt. When I talked to my daughter and you had no you had no previous knowledge about it prior to hearing nothing. But it just something just spoke to you just struck a chord. Just the word ayahuasca.

[00:09:55] And he was telling me in relation to his brother who was hooked on heroin. And he said, wow, I really like to get this ayahuasca because, you know, it's good for getting people off drugs, right? So that's all I knew with it.

[00:10:08] Knew about it at that time went home, did a search. Didn't even know how to spell it. Ayahuasca. What is this stuff? So did a little bit of research, found out you had to do it in Peru. But I deliberately did not read about other people's experiences.

[00:10:27] And I never did any research in that regard. You know, went on YouTube or whatever and saw ceremonies or whatever, I deliberately did not do that. And that's just my, you know, journalistic background where I don't want

[00:10:41] to influence how I'm thinking about this based on other people's experiences. I want to experience it, you know, in as pristine a state or a pure state of mind as I can. So that was my, that was sort of the events that led up to,

[00:10:55] you know, me going down to Peru with a buddy of mine. The guy that took me to Peru is now, you know, he'd been, he'd been working with medicine quite a bit. Past nine years had gone down to Peru every year.

[00:11:08] He is now an amazing, he's my spirit brother. He's an amazing Canadian shaman and his ceremonies. You know, for me it was like, you can do a ceremony in Peru, you can do a ceremony in Canada. And it's a different environment, different set and setting.

[00:11:27] But to me, the healing was exactly the same. So yeah, it's it was quite a journey to get to that point. So when I came back from Peru with my daughter and I just tell people, you know, if you get a chance to do

[00:11:45] Iowansk with a family member, just do it because it knocks down so many of these walls, these these conceptions we have of ourselves, obviously, but also our relationships with people. And it just knocked down all these father, daughter barriers I had with my daughter.

[00:12:02] And we've done God, we've done about 80 or 90 ceremonies together now. So she is amazing and she's very strong in this work. So if you ever get the chance to do something with your family member, I would say yes, go for it because it's great.

[00:12:15] And for your initial experience, the main reason was the fact that you wanted to try to figure out or just get an answer in some way about this beckoning you had of what the human condition was all about, what's going on with it?

[00:12:30] Well, yeah, did you have a few different reasons for you wanting to take that first trip? You know, it was for self healing. You know, like I mean, at that point I'd done, I went through every self help book on the planet.

[00:12:43] I should have bought shares in that industry. And you've been you've been through a lot from what you were just speaking about your childhood, you know, your parents and your brother. And just the drug use and alcohol abuse yourself. That's a lot. I was a mess.

[00:12:57] A lot of baggage. Yeah, I was a psychological minefield. You know, I was emotionally shut down. I was, you know, you can't come through that kind of stuff and not have it affect

[00:13:09] you like, you know, when I was 29, I quit and I said, oh yeah, I'll be good now. No, no, no, no, no, no. All of those driving subconscious driving forces from your childhood. The Jesuits will tell you, give me the boy from one to seven and I'll show

[00:13:26] you the man. Well, the one to seven for me was chaos, you know, that ended with the death of my very dear brother. So that's how the man got created, right? So yeah, I was a you know, I was a bit of a mess.

[00:13:40] I had ceramic arthritis so bad I couldn't hardly walk up a set of stairs. I go to the gym now. I have no pain. I have no arthritis. All of those systemic illnesses like arthritis or whatever

[00:13:53] in the way I view the world now are tied to emotional components within your body. So if you heal those emotional components, that's when you can you can heal yourself physically, the physicality of it follows those emotional components. So yeah, no more arthritis. God, my body feels that.

[00:14:15] You know, I was I was just reading about that and there was a talk about the human dimension and you have there's you have two parts of it. And you just said the psychological aspect of it.

[00:14:25] And then you also have the somatic aspect of it body and mind. And then you have others the spirit. So those things, yeah, they coexist and one affects the other for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I kind of look at it like a computer.

[00:14:39] It clear out the malware and the spyware and all these nasty things and the computer just runs better. But it also speaks to the spirit what people call the spiritual component of this medicine that was was a real I mean this this medicine. Yeah, I'm curious, Alan.

[00:14:58] Can you like I'm sorry to cut you out, but I'm just curious how that first experience was for you. How was yeah, can you break a little bit of that down? Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, no problem. So yeah, it's in the book.

[00:15:12] So I guess I can I don't usually talk about my ceremonies a lot because people can get the wrong ideas from things. But I put in the book so I guess there must have been a reason for it.

[00:15:22] So so there I am in Peru and, you know, we've done all the pre-ceremony diet. My buddy is there. Thank God because he was so helpful for me. And so I'm sitting sitting on this mat and they give me this shot of stuff.

[00:15:38] So it tastes I don't like to taste it. So you shoot it back and I'm sitting there, you know, waiting to see in what's going on. And all of a sudden I am talking to somebody, something, some some other. And I've seen these visions, right?

[00:15:57] And the visions are this vine growing down and this is kind of this brownish vine and some green leaves and stuff that wasn't particularly appealing to me. Right. And somebody is staying to me, ayahuasca. You see how beautiful I am?

[00:16:13] I'm like, oh my God, I'm trapped in here with a vein plant. Vanity. Yeah, but I mean, it's all for my own benefit, which I find out ayahuasca ceremonies now every ayahuasca ceremony that you do will be different from the ceremony that you had before.

[00:16:36] You can take the same medicine in the same setting and you there's no known effects to this medicine. So the question is, what's the intelligence? This medicine comes with baked in intelligence. And every time you do something, it is custom tailored for your healing

[00:16:54] or whatever your intentions are for your healing. That's a customized experience. That's pretty intelligent if you ask me. So anyway, as I'm sitting there in the ceremony, now here's where intention comes into this. I got to give you a little background here.

[00:17:09] Intention, they said, out, set an intention before your ceremony, something you want to accomplish. So I'm going, what attention? What attention? And through all the work that I've been doing, I had come to the conclusion that I'm a fear based person, you know, which stemmed

[00:17:25] from chaos in my childhood where it's a fearful environment. So so my first intention was show me the nature of my fears, which I thought was pretty good. And I tell people this now, this story now, and they said, you did what? Yeah, I said, show me the.

[00:17:46] So anyway, in the ceremony, I at one point in the ceremony, I'm sitting up at the end of my mat as lucid as you and I. And I'm listening to people in the bloke and people are throwing up and doing

[00:17:59] I'm like, what the hell am I doing here? I wasca had her driver out and she just went. And I got driven punted into what I call the cosmic junkyard. I was nothing. I was a speck of sand, whatever in a gray mass, a universe of nothingness

[00:18:25] that was just more nothingness. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know anything. Right? So I'm sitting there with you, you know, which I don't know, maybe it sounds scary to people or whatever, but it was pretty unique experience.

[00:18:38] And so I'm sitting in there and then all of a sudden I hear this thing. It's an Icaro. Icaros are the sacred songs sung by the shamans, right? So at that point, I said, whoa, wait a minute. If I'm hearing something, that must mean that I exist.

[00:18:55] So I followed the Icaro back to the ceremony and came back to myself. And I couldn't tell you my name. I didn't know what my name was. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know who I was.

[00:19:08] And this is something that they refer to, you know, I found out later as the ayahuasca death in where it's kind of like and this is sometimes characteristic of ayahuasca ceremonies in general. You get to practice things in an ayahuasca ceremony to teach you thing.

[00:19:26] It's experiential teaching that, you know, when you think about it later, when you do what's called integration, when you think about it later, there's a lesson in that experience, right? But at that time I was just like, what the whole. Just I scared myself.

[00:19:46] I scared myself with that experience. So anyway, you know, that was a highlight of that ceremony. So the next day I'm talking to the shamans. My buddy says, what the fuck is with this? This is insane. I says, I think I'll go home.

[00:20:02] And now I mean, you know, it's a good thing I wasn't in Canada because I probably would have just jumped to my car and drove home. But I'm in Peru. I down there for, you know, a month, I don't have return tickets or whatever. I'm in the jungle.

[00:20:15] So there was three words that it was a Chilean shaman that was there. And he says to me, well, you know, how he says it's a process. And that's what got me back into my second ceremony. So anyway, just to finish off this little fear thing next ceremony.

[00:20:31] And then they tell me, ground yourself. You might as well tell me to wave a magic wand and you ground myself. What the hell is that supposed to be? So so in my next. I'm going, you can go into vision, open eye vision, close eye vision.

[00:20:50] I was I would go into vision close side, right? So I'm going to these close side visions and I'd be looking at this stuff. And then I'd I'd open my eyes and I'd go, my name's Alan Finney. I came here on flight 2897, Air Canada. I'm in Peru.

[00:21:05] This is how you ground yourself. Well, there's I could figure out. It's the opposite of float yourself. Yeah. It was insane. So anyway, for ceremony, I want to come to me and she says, hey, yeah. I said, what? She says, you remember that first ceremony?

[00:21:25] Yeah. Now this is auditory, right? It's not like you're hearing your own thoughts, but you're hearing a voice. You're here. Telepathic telepathic communication. Tell the path. Nobody's sitting there talking to you, although I my daughter, you know,

[00:21:38] she's been in ceremonies where her and I was going to sit down and a couch and have a chat. I'm assuming it was telepathic. It's inside your head. Like it's like you and me talking. Yeah, it's like you and me have a conversation, right?

[00:21:50] And she says, you remember that? She says, yeah, yeah, yeah. She says, and here is always struck me. I don't bring fear to a ceremony. So in other words, what she was telling me was

[00:22:00] that that experience I could look at as fearful experience or like if it happened now, it'd be a lot of fun. I'd like to really do that again, but she doesn't bring fear. Yeah, because it was a unique experience. It was amazing.

[00:22:13] You know, it's kind of like being in a car wreck when it's happening. You know, you're not thinking, oh my God, I'm scared. Oh, this is, you know, well, I had no idea that he saw.

[00:22:23] But so yeah, so, you know, that was the the pregnant lesson from that thing. I don't bring fear to ceremony. So what she was telling, she answered that question, that intention that I had show me the nature of my fear.

[00:22:36] Well, our ultimate fear of everyone on earth and one of the biggest control mechanisms on earth is our own death, right? People will give up liberty for safety. People will give up, you know, take this jab because you might die.

[00:22:54] You know, it's the whole insurance industry is built on that. You know, it's all comes back to well, at least this is the lesson I took out of it. It all comes back to that primal fear of death.

[00:23:06] All of these health products to keep you alive or keep you keep you alive longer or to keep you looking younger for as long as possible. Yeah, yeah. We don't have this in our societies, Western society, for lack of a better term.

[00:23:20] We have a pathological fear of our own death. You know, I can tell you right now, I don't fear my death. Well, that's what I say. But maybe when the time comes, it might be a little bit traumatic or whatever.

[00:23:32] But, you know, and what I was to do is I was out of balance emotionally or energetically, everyone look at it. And all of these experiences are designed to rebalance you rebalance myself as a human being. And I could go on and on and on for that.

[00:23:51] But it brings those high energetic, high emotional charges back into into your own humanness. And that's the way I look at Iowaska. But, you know, just for people out there that that are going, Jesus, Martha, this guy says he talks to plants.

[00:24:12] I can give you I can offer you DNA level evidence that proves what I'm talking about if you're interested. Yeah, let's hear like a good overview of here of how that goes. Sure. Yeah. In the Amazon jungle, there are nominally 40,000 plant species, 40,000.

[00:24:34] OK, Iowaska is made out of two plants. It's one of the it's the only psychedelic on earth that is made out of two plants. The odds and I'm going, well, what are the odds of somebody combining these two plants to make Iowaska?

[00:24:49] So I figured out the odds, 40,000 times 40,000. The odds if you and I, Richard went down to the jungle crew and decided to make some Iowaska, it's a one in 1.6 billion chance that we would randomly combine two plants and make the Iowaska.

[00:25:07] Funny that you said that because of my head before before you brought this up, I was thinking who in the hell came up with this concoction? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So Richard Schultz, the the father of modern ethnobotany, ethnobotany,

[00:25:28] he was down in the Amazon jungle studying this stuff 150 years ago or whatever it was. And so that's that was his question. How did you guys come up with this? I want because he had specifically studied Iowaska and he asked them, how did you come up with this?

[00:25:48] And what the people that had invented this medicine told him was the plants told us. That that's the people that invented Iowaska. The plants told us to do it. And so, you know, it's like Sherlock Holmes, that thing with Sherlock Holmes where if you've eliminated the impossible,

[00:26:09] whatever's left over, no matter how illogical or how fantastic has to be the truth of the matter. So, you know, that's that's from the people. But even when you think of combining those two plants, it's a specialized process to cook those plants. Exactly. Yeah, that's another thing.

[00:26:27] If you do get the ingredients, but how are you brewing it and cooking it and processing it to where it produces these effects? Yep. And exactly. So that's another impossibility layered on the one point six billion.

[00:26:40] I don't know how to do the odds, but if there's any statisticians out there, you can figure it out. You know, so when the Amazonian Indians, what Iowaska is in their system is something called a master plant.

[00:26:55] In other words, these are the plants in the jungle that hold the knowledge of the jungle, right? You say, oh, that's crazy. Like what do you mean? You know, but it's just like any human society. I mean, there's the dumbasses and there's really smart people.

[00:27:10] Right. So that's the same thing that happens in the jungle is that there are master plants. Iowaska is a master plant. Bovencana is a master plant. Mapacho is a master plant. There are master plants within the jungle that are useful to human beings.

[00:27:27] Right. So even if that sounds crazy, there's a there's an author in Germany, actually where you're at. I forget his name. Anyway, he wrote a book and within that book, he coined the term the Woodwide Web. So modern researchers are starting to find out.

[00:27:47] So they're wondering like, why is this stump still alive? It should have been dead a long time ago. What's going on? It's got green shoots coming off their arm. And they recognize this scientifically that there are master plants in a

[00:28:00] functioning forest ecosystem that's using the mycelium layer just a couple inches under the under the soil fungus mycelium system to not only communicate, but they have the ability to deliver nutrients to a dying plant in the forest. And that's that science.

[00:28:18] That's hard science as documented guys written books about it. So so even Western science is recognizing the existence of master plants within a forest ecosystem. Now, where science diverges and where the Amazonian Indian knowledge diverges is, you know, they can tell you that there are master plants.

[00:28:43] Well, the Amazonian Indians can tell you how to talk to the master plants. They know how to do that. And they've been developing that technology scientifically verified for over 3,000 years. You're going to find out some stuff in 3,000 years when you're doing this type of thing.

[00:29:01] It only it only makes sense. Well, if you if you look at it in a survival and just the sense of now our society nowadays, we're so far removed from nature in itself, we don't we're trying to conquer nature. We're trying to control nature.

[00:29:18] But you have the Amazonians, you have the natives, you have people that are still involved in their environments. They're still one with their with their surroundings, that this is their form of survival. They have to understand they have to know the the the times of seasons.

[00:29:36] They have to know when the when the wind shifts, when there's a predator around and they have to know the plants that are edible, the plants that aren't edible. So I would imagine that these people are still in tuned with.

[00:29:51] There's even some, I guess it probably would would be correct to say that the Amazonians, there's there's some natives and some tribes that they believe that everything has a spirit. There's there's certain spirits that watch over the lake. There's certain spirits that watch over the mountains.

[00:30:08] There's certain spirits that are involved in the plants and their specific spirits that are an animal. You have animal spirits and things like that. So they're very in tune with this stuff. And so that would make sense that they are able to also communicate not all,

[00:30:26] but maybe the ones that are very in tune. And I guess you have the shamans, the ones that that are on that level of dialogue and that level level of spirituality where they're very in tune and they're able to relay the message and facilitate these type of

[00:30:43] this type of information to the rest of the people. The the best book I've ever read on that subject that describes exactly what you're talking about is The Wizard of the Upper Amazon by F. Bruce Lam, and this was a book that was written in the 1930s.

[00:31:00] And you can still find it on on Amazon or wherever. But that's exactly what you what you've just said is exactly what they used Iowaska for. They used Iowaska for survival in the jungle, for mastering their jungle environment for all kinds of very practical, practical purposes.

[00:31:21] OK, anyway, so this book is about a guy by the name of Manuel Cordovo Rios. And he was a young rubber cutter. This is when the rubber cutter wars were going on in the Amazon jungle because latex was a very valuable resource.

[00:31:35] So these rubber cutters would come in and shoot the Amazonian Indians and steal the latex, right? So this Hoon Koon tribe, it's it's one of 160 indigenous cultures that have been identified in the Amazon. Zumu, the shaman chief tells his warriors, hey, there's four rubber cutters.

[00:31:58] They're located four days hike that way. Bring the boy to me and kill the other ones. He's a warrior's trot off and bring Manuel Cordovo Rios back with them. He's a 19 year old kid. So what Zumu, Zumu's son, who he was grooming to be the next shaman chief,

[00:32:21] had been killed and Zumu was old. He wanted this 19 year old, right? So they brought him back to the tribe. First thing they do is prepare him for an Iowaska ceremony. And this is an Iowaska culture. I mean, exactly what you're talking about.

[00:32:35] They use it for practical matters of survival in the Amazonian jungle. So they give him start giving him Iowaska ceremonies after one ceremony. He's he relates in the book, I could understand the language of these Indians. Couldn't speak it, but he understood what they're saying.

[00:32:56] So, you know, again, practical matters of the tribe, they had a group of people in that tribe that were night hunters. And I don't know if you've ever been in the jungle, but at night it is. It's pitch black.

[00:33:15] So what would happen and this happened to Cordovo Rios and he actually gained the ability to hunt at night in the Amazonian jungle. And it's the energetic signatures of the plants of the trees. It's like it's like lighting up everything, you know.

[00:33:33] And if I said to you right now, you know, oh, let's go hunting in the Amazon jungle at night, what would you need? Night vision goggles? You know, could you even do it? Right. These guys could navigate in the jungle at night as well as they could

[00:33:46] in the day and they were so attuned to their environment. Cordovo Rios is sitting with these guys around there. They're out night hunting. So they're they're preparing to go on the hunt. All of a sudden two of them and two of them

[00:34:00] hear a particular insect call in the jungle. Now, you know, if you go down, it's a frigging cacophony of noise. You know, it is a wall of noise in the jungle. I mean, it's just constant, right? And they hear this particular insect call.

[00:34:22] And so now everybody is alert because if they caught this insect, it would be good luck. They considered it good luck for the hunt. So they sat there in silence for, I think, was two or three hours and they hear it call again.

[00:34:38] Two of the hunters, one goes one way, the other goes the other way. They converge on the bush that this insect is on in the jungle in night. And they capture the lucky insect.

[00:34:51] You and I would consider that, you know, if I told you I get a hundred night in the jungle, oh, you're talking about a supernatural ability. If if a human being wasn't capable of doing that, you know, physiologically, we couldn't do it, right?

[00:35:05] And yet by tapping into the wisdom of these master plants, they're hunting that night in the jungle. So without any night goggles, military equipment, nothing. Yeah, yeah. The the early researchers in the original from some Europeans that have studied it, they called it telepathine.

[00:35:25] So, you know, they're saying that this this ayahuasca stuff is gives you telepathic abilities and, you know, for a lot of us out there, you know, maybe a medium could do it, maybe aliens could do it is telepathic. I've been in ceremonies where the shaman,

[00:35:43] good friend of mine, Noe Lopez, I'm sitting on my mat and he's over two guys over singing an echo and he says, hey, Al, what do you think? Pretty cool ceremony. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool. No way. So that's the shippeebo master plants.

[00:35:59] There's all kinds of master plants in that forest ecosystem. And ayahuasca is kind of known as the ambassador to the master plants. So I've been introduced to other master plants. There's something called a dietta that the apprentices will do.

[00:36:17] And a dietta is they know the characteristics of all of these plants. Some are good for opening up your heart, some are good for psychological problems. Some are good for physicalities, some are good for cancer treatment, that sort of thing.

[00:36:32] So they will go into the jungle for a year and consume that plant. Now, this isn't a psychedelic experience. They consume that plant with the known characteristics. And they develop a relationship with that plant.

[00:36:51] And then if the diet is successful, the plant and the apprentice agree that that spirit will take up residence in the apprentice and become available to help people, to help people heal their hearts or psychological problems or what have you. Right? And I've done diettas.

[00:37:11] We got put on some diettas in Peru, not year long diettas. You know, long as I've done this a month. But I can tell you it's that's real. That's real. You and I sit near talking about it.

[00:37:25] So anyway, the historical evidence points to it and now the scientific evidence points to it. So when I say I'm talking to a plant, I'm talking to a plant. That's very interesting. And I'm going to have to look at that bookup that you referred to because

[00:37:38] it only makes sense if they're in need to survive. They have to be 100 percent in tuned, respectful and open to their environment and their surroundings, just like an animal, a beast, a bird or anything.

[00:37:56] They know when the winds are shifting and OK, we got to migrate this way. Let's get the hell out of here because it's going to get cold. There's not going to be any food. So if you want to read one book about

[00:38:09] Bayawaskin and truly understand what the capabilities of that medicine is, you know, this was Cordova Rio set was from the early 1900s when he was a rubber cutter and it's the Hoon Koon Indians that were engaged in this war, this rubber war, right?

[00:38:28] So the information is all in that particular historic time frame and stuff. So it's very enlightening as to. Oh, it's it's amazing. It's a page turner. It's just so interesting. So it's documented. OK.

[00:38:45] This was what I was what I was going to get to because I'd like you to break it down because there's probably people listening and and like we spoke a little bit about this before we started recording was the fact that some people

[00:38:57] they're afraid of how safe this really is. You know, the side effects, long term side effects. Are there is there a way to overdose some? What will I come back the same? Well, I will I fry my brain and be mentally?

[00:39:11] I mean, well, if you will, I come back the same. Maybe that might not be such a bad thing if you don't come back the same. You know, because a lot of people are out there reaching for something. They're they're they're in search of something.

[00:39:24] They're in need of something. I would say that for the most part, people aren't aren't going there just to get high. I guess you just move at your own risk. I don't know if you can talk a little bit about.

[00:39:34] Well, first of all, the side effects and you know, the safety of it. You know, and that's a class of people I label as psychonauts. They're they're trying every medicine, cure, LSD, this, that, the other thing, peyote, bufo, mushroom, DMT and and they're good at it.

[00:39:55] They enjoy it. And you know, I don't begrudge them doing ayahuasca because it's it's a beneficial plant. But just in terms of your own safety in an ayahuasca, like consuming ayahuasca, for one thing, Ayahuasca, you know, the psychoactive agent that science has identified is dimethyltryptamine.

[00:40:16] You manufactured dimethyltryptamine in your body. That gives you the ability to dream. So in that case, it's a what do they call it an entheogen where it's something that you manufacture in the body or whatever? Yeah. Yeah. So

[00:40:33] ayahuasca floods, you know, give you a good dose of of dimethyltryptamine. And I look at it and I don't look at it in those scientific terms. To me, ayahuasca is the on ramp to the cosmic experience or what I call journeying to ayahuasca's world. It's the on ramp.

[00:40:55] It opens, it lights up your brain in a whole bunch of different ways. And all of a sudden, you know, the brain likes to stay at a low energetic state. That's just what a brain does if you look at the brain science.

[00:41:08] And so ayahuasca says, no, no, no, let's turn everything on here. So let's turn on the telepathy. Let's turn on your ability to see beyond what you normally see. Let's let's let's open you up here. You know, so that's what it does. So is that safe? Yes, absolutely.

[00:41:28] 100 percent safe. The ICIRS, which does a lot of the science, it's an organization in headquarters in Spain, but I consider them to be one of the most credible organizations out there. And they did a study a few years back about how many people around the world take ayahuasca.

[00:41:49] They looked at the media reported deaths. They did a particular study into that. There's been 58 high profile deaths attributed to ayahuasca by the mainstream media and in all 58 cases where they went out and got the official autopsy reports, none of the autopsy reports attributed death to any report

[00:42:12] to ayahuasca. So you're not going to die. And the other thing of it is like long term effects. So there's been long term studies of large studies of ayahuasca people. People that regularly take ayahuasca. And a lot of that is through the early ayahuasca churches that were

[00:42:32] established in the early 1900s. And so they looked at long term ayahuasca users and they study these people and they found out they have better diets. They're more, they score better on standard psychological profiles. They are more family oriented. They're more community oriented.

[00:42:51] You know, so that's the long term effects. The ayahuasca is something that is called neuro genetic, which means that it stimulates the production of brain cells. There are other neuro genetic plants out there, mainly mushrooms, that will stimulate the production of brain cells.

[00:43:08] So ayahuasca is forging new neural pathways within your brain. So for example. OK, it's firing new connections. There's new connections being made, you're being rewired. That that part of the brain that sits between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere, I forget what they call it.

[00:43:27] It's the bridge between the two halves of the brain and the long term ayahuasca users that is it's thicker and is bigger. So it's there's more neural pathways between left hemisphere and right hemisphere in the brain. So, you know, that's one of the physical characteristics. So OK.

[00:43:48] So just in terms of long term and they have studies showing that where they they've done MRIs of people, you know, seeing how the brain lights up stuff. Wow, OK. I don't pay a lot of attention to science because I come at it more from

[00:44:02] an experiential or yeah, right? You know, viewpoint. But yeah, those studies are available and are out there. We a group I work with in Canada. We have researchers and, you know, some scientists. We've got a psychedelic pharmacist in the group.

[00:44:18] This guy is amazing and they're heavy into that stuff, you know, the the science and stuff like that. But but, you know, any of the studies that are coming out long term ayahuasca

[00:44:30] users, ayahuasca use make you a better person, you know, for me, long and short of it. And you you know first hand because this is something that you've been part of so many you've been part of numerous ceremonies, right? And you are you also a facilitator as well?

[00:44:45] Well, you know, there's people that I call commercial shamans, you know, that go out and I support these people and I can I can give you some background is what it takes to to sit down and give ayahuasca to people. I'm you know, I do my own ceremonies.

[00:45:01] Most of my ceremonies now in Mexico are solo ceremonies. I take it by myself for my use. But, you know, friends, family or, you know, a guy from Canada kept bugging me, bugging me out. I want to do a ceremony.

[00:45:13] So I'm in Mexico. He came down to Mexico. Yeah, we did some ceremonies. I did that just recently. I did some ceremonies with this Mexican guy. He was visiting from Mexico City for a month and I knew him just through

[00:45:28] a family connection and he was this guy was at the end of his rope. He he he had lost his you know, his world weary. He's an old man like me. And, you know, he couldn't see any reason to go on.

[00:45:42] I don't know if he is suicidal or not or whatever. So we got this psychologist who spoke Spanish and English because my Spanish is a Spanglish and his English was whatever. So, you know, it's essential that we're able to communicate.

[00:45:59] So this guy will come into the ceremonies and and just act as a go between. Right. So then I felt safe going ahead and giving this guy a ayahuasca. Well, I'd originally scheduled two ceremonies to say, yeah, we'll do a couple ceremonies.

[00:46:12] We wound up doing six because this guy took the ayahuasca like duct to water. And we still keep in touch and he tells me he loves me and, you know, I tell him I love him because when you go through an ayahuasca ceremony,

[00:46:25] you, you know, with the people in that ceremony, you go, you know, even if you're kind of not aware of it, but it's it's a shared experience. And it's a very powerful experience and it opens you up energetically.

[00:46:40] And these other people, you know, I mean, people always talk, you know, people kind of concentrate sometime on the difficult aspects of ayahuasca. Oh, I got to deal with this. I don't want to look at that. And oh, you know, and they come into it with trepidation.

[00:46:57] But I'm telling you, some of the most fun I've ever had has been in ayahuasca ceremonies. I mean, when you feel, you know, and this is part of the teaching, look at, here's your joy. Here's your laughter. Reconnect with that.

[00:47:10] Reconnect like that with when you're like, when you were a child, you rediscover that joy of life. And that's what happened to my Mexican guy. He's just on fire at home. And it puts you back to a maybe a child egoic state.

[00:47:28] I don't know how to explain it. But you get to experience life joyfully. You know, like I hear birds singing out my window now and it's just some of the most amazing things go listen to that song.

[00:47:39] And that's, you know, that that, I don't know, the new neural pathways or whatever. And how all that works. I don't know. But when I listened to that bird, man, that's beautiful. That song is just incredible.

[00:47:54] Do you hear that from other people and your experience just being involved involved with it, dealing with the plant yourself and people that you know that have undergone the ceremonies that the effect is long lasting.

[00:48:10] And it's not one or maybe because you just mentioned it and said that it's rewiring and firing new neurons and connect making new connections in your brain that it lasts a lot longer than just that.

[00:48:21] Once the honeymoon effect wears off and now it's back to it's back to how it was, you know, you have the holiday, the holiday is beautiful. And then you get back to life and oh, man, you know, I'm back to the hum drum of it all, mundane, mundane.

[00:48:36] Yeah. Yeah. No, you know, Richard, it's for me is permanent, long lasting. I know lots of people that have done ayahuasca and it's not something in fact, people will say, you know, oh, yeah, I need to get to another ceremony.

[00:48:51] I've done this, but they it's reset your new normal. It's it's a reset of that new normal. Like when you go into an ayahuasca ceremony, say your treatment resistant depression or you you've your world weary or whatever. Yeah, a nihilistic.

[00:49:08] Yeah, yeah, you go into it and I've never seen anybody revert back to that state. And my theory on that myself is that it's see all of these things in our head. And this was, you know, a lot from the studies that I did before ayahuasca.

[00:49:23] And then what I know about dissociative disorder now, but it's that energetic process that you know what you're dealing with in that ayahuasca ceremony, what particular issue because you can't do it all at once. That particular issue is done, is gone.

[00:49:42] You know, and I'm not saying it's completely rebalanced yet. Maybe you need a half dozen ceremonies to completely rebalance it. But when I came away from that, that first set of ceremonies in Peru, my life was changed.

[00:49:55] I never went back to that state that I had been in before, you know. And a lot of this stems from awareness because ayahuasca, like if you look at the Peruvian Declaration from their cultural department says, ayahuasca will show you the foundations of this world.

[00:50:14] And that's an official government declaration from the government of Peru. And I would say ayahuasca will show you the foundations of yourself. And understanding the truth of yourself is an awareness so you don't revert back to those states. I don't think you could go back.

[00:50:32] I mean, if I even wanted to, I couldn't go back to where I was before. It's impossible. And, you know, you see this in, you know, this is born out in the science as well, so for like treatment resistant depression, right?

[00:50:46] These people have been been on antidepressants for years, right? They go into an ayahuasca ceremony. They don't take any more antidepressants, but their life score improves, their psychological profile improves. And, you know, look at the long term studies as well.

[00:51:03] You know, it's to me, it's, you know, from a personal perspective and then from from the science. Here's the way I explain it. Here's the way I explain it. OK, let's say you're living in a shoe box, right?

[00:51:16] And I want you to take this ayahuasca stuff and I was it comes and says, you want me to take a lid off that shoe box? And you go, what do you mean? What shoe box? Yeah. Sure, I guess, you know, take it off.

[00:51:30] So she takes the lid off and you get to look around. And then, you know, at the end of the ceremony, the lid goes back on, but it doesn't go back on the same way. You know, it's whatever happened in that

[00:51:41] ceremony, whatever is done in that ceremony is finished. That's some powerful stuff. And your daughter also, right? Your daughter has has went through a few ceremonies herself. Does it go is it something you do like every few months or just when

[00:51:55] you think you need to get in touch with that that plant spirit? Yeah, you know, for me and this is kind of typical of people that take the medicine. So I took them. I started taking the medicine and I found out some stuff about myself.

[00:52:12] Now, you can't clear all that stuff up in one ceremony. You know, this idea of 10 years of therapy in one night. Yeah, OK, sure. I don't know what they're talking about, but you can't clear everything up in one ceremony.

[00:52:26] So you'll find people like my Mexican friend wanted to keep doing more ceremonies. He's working on something. He found out something about himself and now he's working on it. I got a he was like, oh, I called it pizza for him before the ceremony.

[00:52:40] He says, yeah, Antonio, this is pizza. So he keeps going, my pizza, my pizza. I need more pizza. So you start working on something. You realize there's a path forward. You realize that you don't have to live in whatever whatever hell I was living

[00:53:00] and I don't have to do that. So I was driven to get to those next ceremonies. Right? So as luck would have it like my shaman friend, he was the guy that originally took me to Peru had done nine years of trips down there.

[00:53:16] And he was on his way to becoming a shaman. He didn't even know it at the time. But I was in the fortunate good position of being able to assist in his ceremonies and I was helping organize ceremonies.

[00:53:28] You know, we were importing ayahuasca from Peru and the government didn't really seem to care about the shipments. And so I always had an opportunity to take ayahuasca. And then when when my daughter and I went down for our first trip, I was just like

[00:53:43] here again, it was just so profoundly life altering. And we've done, oh, God, we've done 80 and 90 ceremonies together because she was living with her mom in Saskatchewan and, you know, it's kind of a little bit of a dysfunctional mess there.

[00:53:59] So I said, come on out to where I was and I'll help you get through university and, you know, you can hang out here. And she said, oh, yeah, yeah, dad. So I mean, we've done ceremonies in Peru and now we're with my shaman buddy

[00:54:11] and we're doing ceremonies in my living room at my place, you know, stuff like that. So she was heavily involved in that. But I mean, God, if you can do ayahuasca with a family member, I highly, highly recommend that because ayahuasca shows you the foundation

[00:54:28] of the world according to the Peruvian government. For me, it's ayahuasca shows you the foundation of yourself. But it also shows you the foundation of your relationships to your loved ones, your relationship to the world, your relationship to what you do for a living,

[00:54:45] what decisions you make, that sort of thing. There's an awareness there and, oh, my daughter and I love each other so much. It's just, you know, knock down this father-daughter relationship stuff that gets built up when you're raising a kid.

[00:55:00] We're just two human beings now, but God, we have so much fun. We would do ceremonies like in Peru and at the end of the ceremony, a lot of people just go to sleep or whatever.

[00:55:10] We'd be talking for hours to two, three, four in the morning and it's beautiful. Even now, like she's in Canada, I mean, in Mexico, but we'll get together on the internet there and just chat and laugh and giggle and talk about our lives and stuff like that.

[00:55:26] It's beautiful. It's a completely different relationship that we have now. And she's very strong in this work too. Now she's involved in, she's doing her part. Yeah, she's doing an apprenticeship with my Shaman buddy friend in Canada. I always am such a debt of gratitude.

[00:55:42] He's just such an amazing individual. And here's the thing with people that are serving medicine outside of the jungle. You know, as gringos, I make the distinction between New World Shamanism and Old World Shamanism.

[00:55:57] That's good that you brought that up because I was just going to ask you what does it take for somebody to call themselves a Shaman? Now, I understand in the traditional sense, you have some of them are passed down from generation to generation and you have

[00:56:10] to go through these series of, I guess it would be their own type of apprenticeship for somebody else that is not dealing with it in the jungle. I think that's probably where you were getting at anyways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, when I went to Peru,

[00:56:27] we were sitting with a fellow by the name of Roger Lopez. He had actually been raised in the jungle by his dad, lineage Shaman. You know what most people would consider a lineage Shippebo Shaman. He'd been raised in the jungle.

[00:56:40] He didn't go to school when he was a kid. He his education came later like the formal education or Western education, whatever you call it. And this guy could do stuff in an ayahuasca ceremony that he, oh my God, he showed me some stuff in these ayahuasca ceremonies.

[00:56:56] What do you mean that he is it the way that he conducts it or how he what's his purpose in the ceremony? Because I, from my understanding, once you once you take that tea or that that brew, you're pretty much on your you're on your own.

[00:57:10] But is there a reason for these other people around? Are they doing anything of particular? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're singing the sacred. So so and that's like their channeling this these icicles. A lot of them can't or won't sing icicles outside of an ayahuasca ceremony.

[00:57:29] So they're they're bringing a good chance. Yeah, oh man, if you want to hear some of the most profoundly beautiful music, is these shamans singing these icicles? It just transports you to someplace or other. And that's that's what they do.

[00:57:48] They they can kind of direct what's happening or what's going on in those ceremonies. So for example, we had what's called a tranquilo ceremony, like a quiet ceremony. Yeah, and they're singing these icicles and nobody is, you know,

[00:58:04] oh, I'm bad problems or whatever, you know, and and it was just such a tranquil, beautiful so they they can direct to an extent what they work in conjunction with with this plant intelligence. And they say, you know, help help my brothers puke or help.

[00:58:21] Are they taking it with you or they're yeah, no, you have. Yeah, they they they take ayahuasca just like you do in the ceremony. But they're they're master. Let me let me give you an example of one ceremony. We brought Roger up to British Columbia.

[00:58:38] We're doing some ceremonies there and I and and I know these shamans, right? Like I've been with him in Peru and stuff like that. And so this Chilean Chilean shaman Andre, I can hear him like, oh, yeah, this one's for Alan.

[00:58:53] You know, and I'm like, they bring me back this horking cup of ayahuasca. And I go, OK. And I mean, when you when you're in a ceremony, you drink what you're given because a lot of this is done intuitively.

[00:59:07] Right? So you don't take half of it and give the other half back. That's, you know, it's just not done. So I slugged back this horking big cup of ayahuasca. And I'm sitting at the edge of my mat and I'm watching Roger.

[00:59:22] And he had these two people that came into the ceremony that were a little arrogant or whatever, right? I mean, I met him and the guy was all about his money, drove his BMW right up to the deck, you know, stuff like this.

[00:59:36] So Roger, he's I'm watching him, you know, in in vision. And he is directing these visions towards these two guys. I mean, that's the only way it was beautiful. It was amazing, but there was a directionality to what he's doing, right? And it just blew my mind.

[00:59:57] So after a while, I'm sitting there and all of a sudden, the visions are coming after me. And you know, at that point, I've done I don't know, 100 ceremonies or whatever. And and the visions are coming at me like, you know, and they're just getting intense at first.

[01:00:14] It was really beautiful. And that is so intense. And I'm like, what's this going on? And then somebody kind of grabs me by my spiritual shoulder and and yanks me out and I'm in this space and in this space, I'm seeing in the distance two figures, right?

[01:00:33] Indistinct figures. And I'm hearing what's called a soplar, which is the shamans will soplar people. It's like they're an exhalation of breath or you know. OK, yeah, I've seen that. Yeah. So I'm I'm hearing these soplars.

[01:00:49] But every time I hear the soplar, this castle of visions that I'm looking at grows and expands and then and then it expands and expands again. And it was huge and immense or whatever. Right. So later I'm talking to another she she had been down in Peru

[01:01:14] and talked to people down there and Colombian stuff like that. And she was explaining to me while she spoke Spanish, which is very helpful down there. She was explaining to me that that's something known as castle building. Like like the shamans down there know how to build

[01:01:31] visionary castles and direct castles. And, you know, for me, that's like, wow, that's an amazing thing to do. But really my intention and if you're a shaman, I guess that's some ability that you have or that you're supposed to have or that you're at some point

[01:01:48] have the ability to do something like that. But for me, you know, the only reason I was in those ceremonies was for my own personal healing. That was it. All my intentions. I don't care about your fancy tricks.

[01:01:59] I don't care if you can, you know, trace your family lineage back 300 generations or whatever. It doesn't matter to me. My spirit brother, Enon, the guy I went down with that when I was in Peru,

[01:02:12] he would he would drum on the floor and I said, man, you're a shaman. Oh no, you have. I said it doesn't matter if I'm sitting in front of him or if I'm sitting in front of the people shaman, it's the same effect.

[01:02:24] Like I'm getting that same energetic effect, whether it's him or somebody else. Right. When you start talking about new world shamanism, right? These are people, you know, everybody I know, everybody that's in our group has done has a Peruvian or an Amazonian maestro that they work with.

[01:02:44] They've learned to take the medicine. Some people I know have been in done yearlong dieters in the jungle. You know, and you can ask them, hey, how did you come? How did you come to this? What are you doing?

[01:02:54] You know, how is what kind of an apprenticeship did you do? Because it's all done as an apprenticeship. Right. So these people that are serving the medicine here, certainly these people in our group are very knowledgeable, dedicated,

[01:03:08] new world shamans and a lot of people, you know, this shamanism stuff, this this idea of shaman. Well, a lot of time it denotes a position of authority. Right. So I don't like the word shaman. I prefer facilitator, somebody that helps you get something done. Right. Yeah.

[01:03:24] So so these people that are serving the medicine here are are dedicated people. I mean, we've got shamans in our group from right across Canada. It isn't something you fool around with. It's not something like, hey, and I've had here, I'll give you an example.

[01:03:39] He's he's talking to me. He says, oh, I've been called to the medicine. I go, oh, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He says, I'm going to be working with the medicine. You know, I'm going to be serving the medicine. Oh, well, that sounds pretty interesting.

[01:03:51] How many ceremonies she done? Oh, I haven't done any. I said, look, you go down to Peru for five or six months and then tell me how you're going to serve the medicine. Because most of the time people knew to the medicine,

[01:04:05] I'm not saying all of this is common, but most of the time you get somebody a cup of ayahuasca for the first time and they're laid out in their backs and they're not moving. So get one of the hardest things to do is

[01:04:20] is to get up and walk on ayahuasca. And this happened to me in Peru. I was like, I was laying there and it's like, I had to go to the bathroom. I was like, I can't get up, right? And this is why you want helpers and

[01:04:34] and most people have helpers or apprentices, apprentices that work with them. You say, so Andre had said, Al, if you got a problem, just call me. So I'm Andre, I need some help. I think I was whispering it, I don't know.

[01:04:48] But anyway, you know, and my my spirit brother is going to be a shabbat. He pops up and this guy was deep into his ceremony. He pops up and he says, what's the matter? I got to go to the bathroom. I can't walk. So he walks.

[01:05:03] We snapped out of it. Or he's able to be able to still have control of all of his faculties and take care of what he needs to take care of. Yeah. And exactly it. Exactly. That's it.

[01:05:18] Exactly, Richard, like if I'm in full on visions in an ayahuasca ceremony and somebody says, oh, can you help me? I just you just shut it off in a way you go. It's it's you know, it's an ability. You don't develop that ability. Second ceremony.

[01:05:36] The second or third time you're to an ayahuasca, I would say it's impossible for anybody to do ayahuasca 10 or 12 times and then sit you in a ceremony and serve you. Ayahuasca is just I don't know how you do it.

[01:05:48] You know, I hear these things about like fake shamans. Oh, she's a fake shaman. He's a fake shaman. So so I had a guy one time contact me from he was from Northern Northeastern United States up there someplace. And he said and he'd been asking me before.

[01:06:07] I want to find ayahuasca. I want to find ayahuasca. So I'd send him a list of shamans. I says, keep in touch. Let me know what's going on. If I can help out, I'll help out. Then one day he emails me out. I went to an ayahuasca ceremony.

[01:06:19] I said, wow, tell me how it is. He says, well, it was a fake shaman. And I go, OK, well, phone me up. So he's telling me this story, right? About this lady and he couldn't find anybody else.

[01:06:32] So we booked the weekend with her and she gave my ayahuasca and then she put on a playlist like music, right? And he says, I think it was a playlist that her daughter had done or something. And I go, oh, yeah, sounds.

[01:06:46] And he says so she's fake shaman. I said, well, tell me about your ayahuasca ceremony. Oh, geez, he said, it changed my life. I was a brother and he went on and on and on about this. And I says, OK, so is that a fake shaman?

[01:07:01] Like, I mean, she gave you good quality ayahuasca. She kept you safe. You had two very good ceremonies. And so tell me, tell me where the fakeness comes into this. So he thought about it for a while. Then later he emailed me.

[01:07:16] Yeah, I booked another couple ceremonies with her because for a lot of people, you know, looking for the medicine, they can't afford to go to Peru. They can't afford to go on these trips to South America for a month or whatever.

[01:07:27] You know, most most of the people contacting me at ayahuasca in Canada, they're looking for a ceremony in Canada. You know, young people, old people, pensioners, you know, these guys. They're in their area. Or they'll even travel within Canada, but, you know, for whatever reason,

[01:07:43] a trip to South America is out of the question for them. So, you know, where do you find a ceremony? Who's serving the medicine? You know, and here's the thing, you know, trying to find the shaman because

[01:07:53] there are a lot of them operate quite out in the open, or at least they used to. But you have to go looking for somebody and find somebody. And even then what's the qualifications for a shaman? Well, my base qualification is these people know what they're doing.

[01:08:06] They keep you safe, they can give you a cup of ayahuasca and help you to the bathroom. And then it's just like you said, Richard, it's between you and the plant. If the shaman can help you out somehow or help direct that bonus. You know, you just won

[01:08:23] ayahuasca lottery. You know, it's one on one. It's one on one with this. That's a custom designed ceremony specifically for, you know, either what you ask for, you know, what needs to happen in that ceremony. People may even be afraid of them getting involved with

[01:08:42] with the ceremony only to find out that they weren't even given ayahuasca. Thinking that maybe maybe me getting involved with somebody and who's to say this is even ayahuasca safe? For instance, if you're not too familiar with the plant, you don't know what the plant looks like.

[01:08:57] You don't even know what the now if I see something like cocaine, I know that's cocaine or if I see a plant that looks like marijuana. That's probably some marijuana. But what does the ayahuasca look like? And is this really ayahuasca that you're giving me?

[01:09:10] So there's a big trusting issue that that's involved with that. Yeah, I tell people, I say, look at ask that person where they got the medicine. Who prepared their medicine? Where do they get it? You know, ask for the details.

[01:09:25] Like, do you know the person to cook the medicine? How do you know him? You know, like, yeah, you're going to go into a pretty powerful ceremony. So you know, some research. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ask questions.

[01:09:37] And if you don't like their answers, then, you know, move on to the next guy. Or, you know, energetically, you're not jiving with that person. You know, there's a reason for that. And don't go have a certain with that guy.

[01:09:50] Like I say, most of the people that while the people that I know around the world that serve this medicine, you know, they do it with integrity. I've never met an outlier. Well, I shouldn't say that this one guy in Canada. He had contacted me.

[01:10:04] Oh, yeah, I served the medicine. I did this. I did this apprenticeship. I did blah, blah, blah, blah. So I put them on my list of people that I send out when people ask me, oh, I'm looking for a ceremony.

[01:10:14] I think this guy was now Alberta, B.C. So this one guy said, hey, you know, that I'd sent this list to with that guy's name on it. He gets back to me and he says, Al, you know, I sent this guy money,

[01:10:25] but I haven't he hasn't confirmed the ceremony. I don't know what's going on. So I contacted this guy or tried to contact him. No answer. And so I just took him off the list.

[01:10:35] This guy was out 700 bucks and I says, I am so I'm so sorry about that. But when I talked to him, you know, he had all the right answers. So, you know, what happened to this guy? I don't know. Maybe he there was a personal problem.

[01:10:47] He had monetary. I don't know. But I struck him off the list. And, you know, I'm not saying that everybody out there is serving the medicine with integrity or with the best of intentions. Yeah, such is life. You're going to have that. Oh, any profession, medical profession,

[01:11:05] wherever you're going to get some assholes. Yeah. But for the most part, you've had not only a lot of successful ceremonies, the majority, it sounds like the majority people are walking away in some some way, shape, or form, transformed. They're taking something away.

[01:11:24] They're learning something about themselves and they're improving their lives for the better, you know, overall with minimal side effects. And and that's always something that, you know, you would you would think that it would be promoted, but it's like I said, there's a there's a lot

[01:11:40] of stigmatism attached to it. And you have I've seen documentaries where they they put a light on it. And it seems like to be it seems to be a pretty fair light on the ceremonies. Some people are they have their hangups about certain things where they're just I

[01:11:55] don't want to feel the nauseousness of it. Or like you said, some don't want to deal with there there could be that shadow coming out. And you know, the things that yeah, they don't want to deal with that.

[01:12:08] And we can sometimes want to run away from our problems. Now, if we always turn away and run away from those type of things, then how can we ever expect to get better or get well?

[01:12:17] So that's going to be something we have to deal with on a personal level. Exactly. This is, you know, that's Carl Jung, you know, the insane have no way of recognizing their madness, right? I would say the sane have no way of seeing their madness as well.

[01:12:35] Iawaska takes you outside of yourself and lets you and this was Young's whole idea when he was doing his sessions, take somebody outside of themselves and let them look at themselves. And that's that's, you know, a lot of that shadow work.

[01:12:52] But just in terms of shadow work and going into a ceremony, first thing, let me let me talk about the puking. OK, so you go into an Iawaska ceremony and this happened to me happen to many, many most people, I'm going to say this is common.

[01:13:09] You feel this nasty ass black energy in your body, right? And you can feel it and you can you don't want it in you. I'm telling you, you do not. You know, when you feel that when you feel this stuff that's been influencing you

[01:13:26] and this is just how it, you know, experientially comes about in a ceremony, you're feeling this dark energy in yourself and you want to puke that out. So it's, you know, when we're talking about puking, like if you're sick

[01:13:39] or you drank too much or whatever, it's a different thing altogether. You want to get that energy out. And sometimes you will in a ceremony. Sometimes I was going to shift some stuff until you're able to purge that energy.

[01:13:50] But that's the only thing you want to do is get that energy out. So when you throw up in a ceremony, it is such a relief. You know, it's beyond the physicality of it. And and for most people, you know,

[01:14:04] puking in a ceremony is like five minutes of the ceremony, not even. You know, it's just a small portion of the ceremony that they're going to be sick. And as you progress through the like, as you do more and more ceremonies

[01:14:16] and that energy gets cleared, like I don't ever puke in a ceremony. Haven't done for, I don't know. I can't even remember the last time I puked in a ceremony, you know? So then there's other ways of clearing that energy. Cleansing process then.

[01:14:32] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a urging. You're moving a lot of energy in an Iowa's to ceremony and something has to give in the physical part. When you throw up, oh my God, it's like you've thrown up the weight of the world's off your shoulders.

[01:14:48] You know, so it's it's a little bit different experience than that. My daughter, she gets oily skin, you know, that's that's throwing off energy, yawning in a ceremony. Laughing laughter in a ceremony is is so cleansing. It's oh God, some of sometimes like with with my

[01:15:10] spirit brother in Canada, he is a frigging comedian. Like and he would have a handle on the energy, right? So we'd all be kind of like like an Iowa's to ceremony comes in waves, right?

[01:15:20] So you up and then down again and up and down and up and down. And he would have a good handle on the group energy. So when we're all kind of back, he'd tell a joke or something.

[01:15:31] Oh my God, we'd be rolling on the floor laughing or gratitude, feeling gratitude. You've never felt gratitude at that level or love or camaraderie or, you know, it's it's it allows you to feel a purity of your emotions in that ceremony.

[01:15:50] And it's not all just shadow, dark work or whatever. So I'll give you an example. This lady from Argentina, she she contacted me and she wanted to do ceremonies, wanted to do ceremonies. She lives about, I don't know, 300, 300, 300 kilometers from here.

[01:16:08] So finally I said, yeah, yeah, OK, come on, we'll do ceremony. So gave us and and I told her, you know, as coach and her talent, look at, you know, this can happen, I can happen. This idea of thing.

[01:16:18] Oh, she says, I know exactly what I want to deal with. And it's a shit for my childhood. And I'm going to do this and she's working on this thing. And she was a psychologist too. So she's working on this nasty stuff.

[01:16:31] And I'm got, you know, she's she's getting ready to confront this in a ceremony. Right. And so going to battle. OK, she's yeah, she's going to have a battle with her inner demons. Right. And I go, OK, sure. Yeah, whatever here, here's some ayahuasca.

[01:16:45] So we drink some ayahuasca and she laid down there and giggled all night long. Just laughing. She just laughing at stuff. And she's telling me some of the stuff. So where were you laughing at?

[01:16:58] She says because I use my patch on the ceremony, which is a sacred tobacco. Oh, she says me and my partner, one of the stories that me and my partner were on a bus somewhere and they served me a sandwich.

[01:17:11] So I told my partner, hey, where's the lasagna? Just like this. And she she never did because ayahuasca, you know, you think you're going to be dealing, she needed to get in touch with her joy. She needed to get in touch with her.

[01:17:28] And I was understood this and said, no, we're in deal with that. We're dealing with this, you know, like this. Have fun with yourself. This is what you really need to do is reconnect to that that childhood joy.

[01:17:39] And that's what they did for two or three ceremonies there. Laughing like crazy. I'm sitting there in my ceremony going, oh, that's interesting. Because because I thought, you know, with all of her trepidation and stuff that she'd be a hard case, but yeah, easy ceremonies ever did.

[01:17:56] I sit there listening to her giggle all night. Yes, it sounds like it gives you the experience of embracing and feeling and living all of the emotions without any hang ups, without any of the things

[01:18:14] that may have tainted us along the way, living the life that we've lived from childhood you have so you're not able to you can laugh, but you can't laugh like you once did say as a child did because they're so innocent and they

[01:18:27] don't have all of these different things that have been thrown at them and just demolished them in a way and destroyed them. And we come out, you know, we come out with battle scars. And so it takes a lifetime for us to heal those things.

[01:18:41] But it sounds like with ayahuasca that strips all of it naked. And you're able to just like you once put it, it's the pureness of everything. So if it's joy, it's joy, but it's heightened to a level and a dimension that you've never experienced before.

[01:18:59] Yeah, and, you know, in ayahuasca, it's something called a peak experience. So you're able to access that peak experience as a human being. Wow, I've connected to this purity of joy or love or laughter. And that's a peak experience.

[01:19:17] But just because you experienced in an in an ayahuasca ceremony ain't going to give you some superpower when you're done. You've dealt with, you know, you've dealt with some of the energy and you understand that that's available.

[01:19:32] And that's why a lot of people want to get to that next ceremony. But, you know, you can only get a certain portion of that, you know? So you reconnect with your joy, you have more capacity. But because you've had that peak experience, you know, hey,

[01:19:48] this isn't this isn't to be all an end all of it. We've cleared this part of that nasty energy in a ceremony. But, you know, it's not a miracle. You can't do it all. You know, it's it's a process.

[01:20:01] It's just like my shaman buddy told me back way back when the first ceremony. And I would say even the people that once you have that experience and to take away from it, once you're back into the real world, you're dealing with real life and you're amongst people

[01:20:15] that maybe you work with or you're just you're moving around in society that there's also going to be, you know, a bit of your own work to be doing away from the plant, you know, when you're just living life as a as a. Yeah, civilian.

[01:20:34] Yeah, there you go as a civilian, so to speak. And you you're going to apply some maybe there's there's things that you learned along the way during that ceremony. And you can apply it to your life. But like we're all works in progress.

[01:20:47] We're all trying to figure it out and sort out the chaos and the madness. And and like they do say is life is teaching you as you go. So through circumstances, through situations, you can look at you can respond or react in ways to where you're going to

[01:21:04] learn something about yourself, you're going to learn something and just improve your overall experience, you know, on life. So I think that that I think there's also I don't know if everybody is probably a case to case basis.

[01:21:16] But once they walk away from that ceremony and some people there, they're actually doing the work, you know, outside of the ceremony and putting in the work to just improve their situation and whatever it is. If it's healing, if it's recovery, if it's just breaking past those fears.

[01:21:33] Yeah, and that's that's formally recognized by the experts now. And it wasn't something I knew when I went to Peru. My buddy and I just did this organically. We'd stay up all night talking and laughing and, you know, just talking about things, serious things, silly things or whatever.

[01:21:49] This is something called the integration process. So you go into an ayahuasca ceremony and it's coming at you and it's crazy. And well, what's this about or whatever? Or God, I went down and to the plum the depths of my soul overload. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:22:05] So after the ceremony, and this is just as important as the ceremony itself, is this integration process. And there's a rule of thumb. Somebody told me once after a ceremony is 10 days of integration. I don't know if that's true or not, but

[01:22:19] you stir up a lot of things in a ceremony. So after the ceremony, you really want to examine what you're doing and who you're doing things with, you know? So if you're involved with a toxic person or whatever,

[01:22:32] you know, you avoid that person and that's called, you know, formally called now integration. There's integration coaches and it's something that if you go into ceremony, you really need to be aware of that because it isn't over when the ceremony is over.

[01:22:47] You're given a kind of a new paradigm and you have to adjust things. You readjust things. And that's where the permanence of ayahuasca to me is is never more apparent than that because that integration process shows you what where you've come.

[01:23:05] It's kind of like a reset to a new normal. So what's that going to look like in your life? What level of awareness are you going to bring in? You're going to want to avoid this toxic person. You want to throw away this, you know, this bad habit.

[01:23:18] Like I've known people going to an ayahuasca ceremony daily pot smokers or cigarettes or alcohol or whatever. And they just give it up after the ceremony. And that wasn't the reason that they were in the ceremony.

[01:23:32] They're in the, you know, they like their, they call their pot medicine, right? But they're chronic, chronics, I guess is what you call them. And they just give it up one of the side effects. That wasn't the main, you know,

[01:23:44] the main reason why they were going into there, but that was just something that happened on the side, a little extra. Just a little extra bonus. Thanks for playing. There you go. Dr. Dr. Gabor Matta, he's, you know, world famous in addiction specialist.

[01:24:02] And he was giving ayahuasca to East side drug addicts like Skid Row addicts in Vancouver, right? And he would take them and take him to a ceremony or set of ceremonies or whatever. And a lot of them, I think that he

[01:24:17] I think was 60 percent gave up their drug of choice then and then didn't go back. But but some of them did. So here's where we're talking about a level of commitment. There's programs in South America, for example, out of Brazil,

[01:24:30] where they take, you know, street addicts who want to participate. I don't know how the participation is set up, but they'll take street acts who want to change their life and they'll take them in a jungle for 30 days

[01:24:41] of ayahuasca ceremonies and physical activity and and integration work or whatever. And you know, you can do one ceremony and quit alcohol. But if you're in the jungle for 30 days, you're going to be changed.

[01:24:56] You're going to be after the end of that month, you're going to be a changed person. I mean, no doubt about it. 30 days in the jungle, man. Well, that's the equivalent to some of these rehabs they're doing like 30 days

[01:25:07] and they have a very I wouldn't say they have the best success rate. You have stories of people they've they've been to rehab 10 times, 15 times, 20 times and the money that is spent in those centers. And these people trying to get help and. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:25:25] There's there's a center in Peru, Takawasi in Tarapota, Peru. And they're kind of one of the original evidentiary based approaches to ayahuasca for addictions and that sort of thing. And they have a tremendous I've seen the study.

[01:25:43] I don't recall exactly what the percentage they have a tremendous success rate. And and it's evidentiary based and it's, you know, clinical based. But the thing is, you can't separate ayahuasca from the ceremony. There's a company. It is a great there's a company in Canada.

[01:26:00] Come on, oh yeah, we're inventing an ayahuasca pill. And I'm like, you can't separate ayahuasca from the ceremony. It's impossible, you know, unless you know, if you went to the hospital, the only way you'd be able to give an ayahuasca properly would be as if your

[01:26:17] doctor's a shaman, it's a it's a different paradigm than our typical Western way of thinking about what a medicine is. There's something wrong in you and one of the pipes is clogged. One of this that take this and you'll clear it up.

[01:26:33] Ayahuasca works at, you know, what I call an energetic level or a spiritual level. I guess people want to put in those terms or, you know, however they want to think of it, to me, it doesn't matter. Is it spiritual? Is it psychological?

[01:26:45] Does it work? Yes, it worked. Yes, yes, it worked for me. So proof is in the pudding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a different paradigm. And that's exactly why I kept doing all those ceremonies.

[01:26:56] And that's why, you know, I did about what I call my deep dive into ayahuasca for five years, but I was dealing with a dissociative disorder, which, you know, that's a serious, you know, Western psychologist. Where they had I'd been to, you know, I've I did everything counseling

[01:27:18] psychologists, this at the other thing. And nobody found out about this stuff. You know, this something called dissociative disorder. So after my five year deep dive, ayahuasca, you know, by through synchronicities or whatever leads me to this information about dissociative disorder.

[01:27:36] And that's when I started reading about my life and how difficult it is to diagnose. And it's just like anything else. It's a spectrum from bouts of dissociative amnesia, which I had a three year experience with that. Wow.

[01:27:51] So prior to that, you were just fighting an enemy that had no name, that had no face. Yep. Bingo. That's it. Exactly, Richard. It was and this is part of the known. I was driven like what is this?

[01:28:04] I knew there was something wrong, but I read and I did this in Buddhism and Reiki and Messiah and blah, blah, blah. And it was all useful. You know, it was all useful for, I guess, a level of awareness. But it's an intellectual level of awareness.

[01:28:22] And until I actually experienced ayahuasca was where I saw some relief in all of it. So I just, you know, it's just like people go like my Mexican friend, I got to get I need another ceremony, I need another ceremony on my mass pizza, mass pizza.

[01:28:35] So you're working on something. I was working on that for five years before I got into a diagnosis. And the diagnosis was just so useless. Like, oh, wow. Other people understand this thing. I just read about my life. It was just looking at that information.

[01:28:52] So that was incredibly helpful and never would have done that without the plants. My own personal opinion. It was such a powerful experience for you that now that you're completely all in. You're deep in it. You're involved in it. You're helping people along the way, facilitating.

[01:29:08] And then you're also are you doing coaching? Is that something that you do? People that after they've had their experience and they've had their ceremonies and if they have any questions, they can come to you and contact you.

[01:29:19] And you kind of kind of help them or counsel them along the way. I just do that. Like, I mean, people contact me off the Iowatski Canada website or whatever. Email me. I always tell them, look at it. You got any questions?

[01:29:32] You know, something comes up or whatever. You know, just call me. I'd like it's not a business or, you know, it's not a business or anything. I just it's my way of giving back to to this work.

[01:29:44] And people call me up and, you know, and a lot of them have these valid questions that and not so much anymore because of the understanding of the integrated process, but some people call me up and they weren't in touch with

[01:29:57] their the facilitator, the facilitator didn't have time or whatever. Say, if I'm talking, we talk and I say, oh, well, you know, what happened there was this and, you know, so having somebody with experience with the medicine and this is always my recommendation for people.

[01:30:13] You know, if you're going to an integration coach, first thing I would want to know is how many Iowatski ceremonies have you done because it ain't like regular medicine or psychology or whatever. But yeah, so I'll talk to them and we'll talk through stuff.

[01:30:27] And, you know, like this guy with the fake shaman, you know? Yeah. Yeah. He, you know, so, you know, we just need to steer people back to the level of sanity. Right. Yeah. What would you say to somebody who who has been interested in doing

[01:30:43] something like this and a few tips or steps that they should take before they completely commit to it and seek out, seek out a ceremony and seek out a way to get in touch with the spirit plant? Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Here's here's the thing.

[01:31:04] You can do all the research in the world. You can look at the studies study long study wrong. Huh? You can watch the videos. You can see, oh, here's my first ceremony and I freaked out. You know, I looked at some of those YouTube videos and I go,

[01:31:17] are these people doing the same medicine I am? And there's nothing, absolutely nothing that will prepare you for an Iowatski ceremony. You know, and I was like this before I started Iowatski. You know, people saying, oh, you're doing Iowatski.

[01:31:31] And, you know, that's a, you know, you don't know what you're getting into and stuff. I done some psych, you know, I did LSD and I did mushrooms and blah, blah, blah. I don't care you do all that stuff.

[01:31:42] I don't care whatever you have done in the past, unless you're a psychonaut very experienced with, you know, that's a different breed of people altogether. But for your average Joe out there, you know, that's going to take Iowatski

[01:31:56] and I can get him prepare you for what this is that I'm aware of, you know, where you can go, oh, well, if I know this, you know, that'll make the ceremony easier or better or whatever. It's it's something you just have, you know, it's like,

[01:32:12] I know seeing a UFO, you know, the guys that see UFOs, they just know. Yeah. And people that take Iowatski, it's like, OK, yeah, all that stuff that I was reading about, there's no way of explaining it. It's hard to put it into words.

[01:32:29] My daughter and I, you know, we developed or tried to buy through all our talking to all our conversation stuff. We try to develop a vocabulary for, you know, for this medicine, right? So understanding the medicine and that type of thing. But language is such

[01:32:52] primitive way of conveying meaning from my, you know, I mean, I've done some hypnosis sessions with a lady in LA and we both done the medicine. And when she puts me under hypnosis and, you know, we're in touch with whoever

[01:33:14] we're in touch with, it's all done with pictures. So I'll get a picture in my head, you know, and I know exactly what that picture means. And then I'll try for 10 minutes to explain there what this means,

[01:33:30] because there's this level of information that gets conveyed that is not how we usually get information, right? So it's to try to explain that to somebody to say, wow, you know, it's like saying a picture is worth a thousand words.

[01:33:48] Oh, yeah, it's and it goes well beyond that because there's a knowingness to it. You know, there's a knowing what that picture actually means. Expressing what it means is completely different. I mean, it's difficult. And so how do you explain telepathy to somebody?

[01:34:05] How do you explain what they call downloads in an ayahuasca ceremony? Graham Hancock said he had a book downloaded to him. I know exactly what he's talking about. I've had downloads, you know. My writing now is I consider it a collaboration.

[01:34:20] The books that I'm working on, you know, sometimes I'm writing. You know, pre ayahuasca, post ayahuasca. But I'll be writing something. It comes out fully formed. You know, I just sit down and say taking dictation.

[01:34:32] You know, so you're the you're the you're the tool and it's just working through you. Yeah, I like to look at it as a collaboration. A collaboration. There you go. Just, you know, to satisfy my ego or whatever.

[01:34:48] But yeah, there's an intelligence there that until you experience it, it's, you know, the the videos or the people explaining it is just a pale comparison to what happens to you in that ceremony. So how people prepare for I wasn't prepared for the ceremony.

[01:35:06] I don't know anybody that said, oh, yeah, that was exactly what I was thinking it was going to be. It doesn't happen. So all the preparation beforehand is just to let you know what you may experience the sickness that may come of it.

[01:35:19] And, you know, I guess it's just like small preparation before you go ahead and take the brew and you you get on your way. Well, there is there is preparation that you do for a ceremony. It's called the pre ceremony diet.

[01:35:34] And that's very, very useful because ayahuasca is a clearing process, not only physically, but mentally. It's an anti inflammatory and the anti anti inflammatory effects are quite profound, but that pre ceremony diet where you're starting to cleanse your body and get the gunk out.

[01:35:54] You know, that's an energetic process as well. And, you know, there's lots of different pre ceremony diets and, you know, talk to your shaman or facilitator, what should I be on? You know, there's all kinds of different ones out there.

[01:36:05] But also what it does is it, you know, eating is a habit, right? So we tend to do this habitual thing and prepare the same stuff for weather. So there's a psychological component that we're, oh, wait, wait, I'm not eating

[01:36:18] my regular stuff. What do I want to do? How do I want to do it? So, you know, that's that's very good preparation for coming into an ayahuasca ceremony. Why am I here? What do I want to do?

[01:36:28] And it's that self awareness and self examination and you don't need ayahuasca for that, you know, I mean, you know, there's all kinds of paths to the truth of it, but it helps get you into that psychological framework. And, you know, it's good.

[01:36:44] But like some of these videos on YouTube, you know, the first ceremony I ever did and oh my God, I was riding around on, you know, a unicorn talking to the golden Buddha. Good. That's great. You know, what does that mean to me? You know, I don't know.

[01:37:04] It's like telling somebody your dreams, right? You know, it's very profound to you. But, you know, it's a cool story. Right. Yeah. And that's really what it comes down to just pretty much like it's going to be your own unique personal experience.

[01:37:18] And until you you experience that personally, then it really means nothing. Yeah. You can hear it. You can you can listen to somebody talk about it, but you have to feel it on your skin and you know, wear that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:37:34] And, you know, just coming back around the intelligence of this plant medicine. Like let's say you got 30 or 40 people in a big Maloka in Peru, which is not out of the question, right? And you've got five or six Shopee bus shamans and apprentices and helpers.

[01:37:50] So, you know, it's not like you're in it by yourself. But everybody in that ceremony is having a completely different experience than you are. So, when you think about known effects of something like heroin, I don't know if I should say that. Crazy. Isn't that isn't that insane?

[01:38:08] Everybody in that ceremony is having a completely different experience than what you are and that blows my mind, right? So at the end of some ceremonies, people going, oh, my God, I had so much fun. That was just such a light, beautiful ceremony.

[01:38:25] And another guy going, oh, my God, that was the most intense ceremony I've ever had in my life, you know? And it is a custom designed experience based on what you need. Not what you're asking for so much because like my that story of my friend,

[01:38:45] she was asking for this deep shadow work and she didn't get it. It's like, you don't need that. Here's what we need to do first. And I've had that in ceremonies. One time I was saying thing, you know,

[01:38:57] I was getting ready for a ceremony at my place and and I'm saying, I got I got to face this fatherhood stuff and it was weighing on me and been wearing on me for a couple of weeks and I'm doing my diet.

[01:39:08] And I'm like, OK, we've got to clear this up, right? So, you know, part of my preparation is I go into shower before before I go into the ceremony, clean myself up a little bit and then go down to the ceremony, right? So in the ceremony,

[01:39:22] I was who comes along and plays a snippet of song in my head. Cats in the cradle by I believe it's Cat Stevens or whoever. Maybe no, maybe it wasn't. But cats in the cradle and the Silver Moon little boy. No, not little boy blue in the man.

[01:39:38] Who did that song? God, it's it'll come after we get off. It always does. Yeah, exactly. And it's a song about fatherhood. When you're coming home, dad, I don't know when we'll get together. Then dad, you know, we'll get together.

[01:39:54] Then what is song is that? I don't know. But anyway, it's a song about fatherhood. And if that song came on a radio or something, I wouldn't listen to it. I'd shut it off. I'd walk out of the room or whatever. It just tore me apart.

[01:40:05] She played that snippet of song in my head and that was it. That was that's where we dealt with fatherhood stuff. And I love that song now. And she's like, OK, you done with that? We got other stuff I got to work on.

[01:40:19] This is what you think you need. We're going to go here. This. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. The intelligence is beyond, you know, and it took me a long time to learn to trust that intelligence and it took me a long time to learn

[01:40:37] to accept, you know, that that I'm dealing with this intelligence that is beyond human intelligence, you know, and to trust that intelligence as well. I remember one ceremony like I'm sitting there lecturing ayahuasca and I'm saying, well, yeah, that's great.

[01:40:55] You know, in the ceremony, but you don't know the world I have to live in. I got bills and I got below and this got to pay car payments. You know what I'm lecturing her about? All of this stuff that humans go through.

[01:41:09] She knows that stuff upside down backwards and forward. And I've been shown that in so many different ways. But the trusting that trusting that medicine and now I just completely trusted if I have an experience in a ceremony, my job is to figure out

[01:41:24] what was that about, you know, what are we doing here? What was the lesson? Why did I need to have that type of experience, you know, through that whole integrative process, right? But when you do that, you will find like I do anyway. Maybe you won't.

[01:41:38] But I find that that is for my best to make me the best human being that I can be is is is why. And I don't know why she does it. Why is she like humans? I don't know.

[01:41:52] Like we're not very likable if you look at what's a whole. She's got a soft spot for humans. For whatever reason. Yeah, yeah. For some reason or other. She wants the monkeys to become self aware and to become authentic.

[01:42:08] And one thing that she done like is people praising her. Oh, ayahuasca. Thank you so much. You're so good. You know, you're so big and powerful and I'm such a little insignificant, little human rat or she hates that.

[01:42:23] I can tell you that for a fact she's like shut up, stand up for yourself. Become the sovereign human being that you were meant to be. That's what you're supposed to be doing here. And when I went through some ceremonies where it was like I realized

[01:42:38] that everything that I'm doing, everything that happens in my life is my responsibility. Nobody else. It's not the outside world. I can react to that how I want to react to it. It's it's not a set of circumstances.

[01:42:53] It's my responsibility to direct how my life is and what I do with my life. What kind of a human being I am. And that, you know, at that point in my life was a paradigm change. It's like there's no victims here. There's no victimization.

[01:43:09] Yeah, are responsible for you. So shut up, I'll bitch slap you until you get it. That's powerful stuff because that was something that for the longest, I never wanted to tell myself because when I was younger, it was always somebody else's fault.

[01:43:28] Every time something went wrong, never mind what I was doing, but it was always somebody else's fault and I couldn't get a break. I had a chip on my shoulder, but that's pretty much like one of the main components of this podcast.

[01:43:42] And it's funny that you bring that up is because it's about when people take responsibility and accountability for their livelihood, for their situation, for their circumstance, because there are some things that are out of out of our control.

[01:43:56] But even if we're in the midst of that situation, we still have and we still have the responsibility to if we can improve that situation, we can improve ourselves in the midst of that situation. 100 percent, yes. Yep. Yeah. No, I'm with you 100 percent.

[01:44:16] And people say that Iowask has an agenda. I say, OK, what is the agenda? Stand up for yourself. Understand your circumstances. You know, situational awareness of not only the physicality of your situation, but of your mental state within that physicality.

[01:44:35] That's for you. You could you can do that. I mean, there's there's Buddhist monks, they put them in jail and and, you know, they are in the same mental state as if they were out of jail. You know, so so how does that come about?

[01:44:48] And you know, to me, that's that's Iowaska right there. Shut up. Stand up for yourself. You know, become the sovereign human being that you're meant to be. And some they're so in prison that they become so comfortable with prison

[01:45:03] that when they do have the freedom of choice, it's overwhelming. And they rather have somebody else make those decisions and choices decisions and choices for them. Like I've read stories about people when they were released from detention centers or people that were were freed from, let's say,

[01:45:21] escaping North Korea or even people that were released from prison. And they came out and they had just so many choices and decisions. I heard this one story. This guy was like I was 25 years in prison.

[01:45:34] And when I was released, I felt like such a kid and I felt like such a fool because for the first time I'm in a store and they're telling me, just go ahead and buy a hat and I'm sitting in front of a rack of hats.

[01:45:46] And I couldn't decide which I was used to for 25 years being told when to pretty much how to move, when to move, when to sleep, what you eat. And so I couldn't. So I just ended up picking up the hat that was on the floor.

[01:46:01] OK, I'll take this hat. But all of all of the choices and decisions and some people you that that can also be something that's just overwhelming. Some people don't want to take that. They they're afraid to take responsibility for themselves

[01:46:16] and just rather have somebody else do it for them or blame, you know, whatever the reason is for them not being where they are because it was no, it was their fault, his fault, but never mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:46:28] So if anything, that's that's what I'd say would be the agenda there. You know, wake up. I live in a different world like like when I look at my life pre-Iowansk and post-Iowansk, I live in a different world. It is so much richer.

[01:46:45] I have such an understanding of what makes up this world and the influences and how I get to interact with those influences. And not only that, but like I have some seriously brilliant spirit friends that I get to interact with and understand things

[01:47:04] that they're telling me and they're showing me. My world is you know, it's like that Disney thing, you know, like when you're a kid, you know, when you wish upon a star, you know, this whole magical, magical thing. I live in that world.

[01:47:18] I live in a world of magic and synchronicities and it's, oh man, I can't tell you what and joyfulness and laughter. And yeah, go ahead, kill me like, yeah, I know what's waiting. You know, it's like Ella Fitzgerald, right?

[01:47:37] I have a spiritual suitcase and I know where I'm going. You know, there's a world outside of ourselves that we don't get to experience when you experience that. A bird singing, you know, I mean, this bird is, I don't know what bird it is, but that's so beautiful.

[01:47:52] You know, and it's just a richness to my life now that I wouldn't give that up. And then I can say about that is Hallelujah. You've actually died. The demons. Healed. And that's what I was thinking when people are you're saying it is evil,

[01:48:12] negative, black force that's inside of you. I mean, this is a reaction. It's the the spiritual, the psychological and then your body is reacting and it wants to get rid of it. And so that's what it's doing. It's it's releasing all these toxins.

[01:48:25] And so I was thinking like in the back of my head that it sounds like they're just exercising the Dean. Yes. You know, when I was, you know, deep into my deep dive there, I discovered what I called gatekeepers.

[01:48:42] And they were, you know, and this this relates back to the dissociative disorder. But I see this in people, the extreme things teaches a lot of things, you know. But I see these things going on with people and where a part of an aspect

[01:48:57] of your personality will kick in, you know, whether you're consciously aware of it or not, and you'll get kind of sidelined. And I had these things, these gatekeepers that were doing this in a very direct manner like my I used to be the comedian, right?

[01:49:11] And, you know, you hear these things about comedians laughing on the outside, crying on the inside. But I referred to that as my inner clown. And after one ceremony, this girl I've done some some ceremonies with, she says, Al, I saw your clown.

[01:49:28] And I said, what? You saw that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She says there was a clown and and it was this clown face like the happy clown face that would then switch over to this, you know, the horror clown. Oh, OK, yeah.

[01:49:44] Like from that horror movie, it I think it was it. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I'm at another ceremony with these other people. And there's this very connected lady like psychic lady type. And she came up to me says, Al, I see your inner clown.

[01:50:02] I saw your inner clown. I saw your clown face. And I'm like, OK, so that's a thing, you know? So it's not that you, you know, you don't want to give up your sense of humor, but it's got to get back into balance.

[01:50:14] And so when I discovered these personalities, whenever I would run into a personality in a ceremony, I say, ah, OK, I got you, you're done. We're finished. And some of them were just so happy to go these aspects of myself like Mad Allen

[01:50:27] and Sad Allen and the inner judge and the cop and the lawyer and blah, blah, blah. I was filthy with gatekeepers. So those and they're useful that that information or that mindset is useful. But it's got to get what I had to do was bring that oversized energy

[01:50:46] and bring it back into my body. So when those aspects of my personality are done, you're gone. And they're just like, oh, OK, they get reintegrated. It got reintegrated back into me. That energetic charge got reintegrated back into myself. And that becomes not a negative drain on me.

[01:51:04] It I don't know if I've explained this properly, but it brings you. It brings that energy that's expended on that over emotional charge or that that that character personality characteristic. It rebalances and brings it back into myself. And I no longer have to deal with that energy.

[01:51:23] So, you know, those were those were permanent changes. So once I got onto that, I was looking for them. I was I was on a gatekeeper hunt. Like early in my ceremonies, I'm doing ceremonies and thank God, my spirit brother was tolerant of this.

[01:51:38] But like I'd be in a ceremony and, you know, it's it can be overwhelming. It can be a little scary or whatever. Well, I'd get parked and somebody else would be going, oh, wow. Look at this. Is this and talking out loud in a ceremony?

[01:51:55] Right. And after the ceremony, people would say, oh, Alan, you were so noisy last night and said, noisy. I'm just laying in the ceremony, have my own little quiet little ceremony. Right. And how I caught on to that?

[01:52:09] Like I used to record audio in the ceremony because I loved listening to the icros later, right? Like that that, you know, would would sing or whatever. And I listen and say, yeah, what the hell is this? I was being noisy, you know.

[01:52:25] And so that's when I actually started catching on to these aspects of my personality and what an dissociative disorder would be. You know, in full blown dissociative disorder, it would be, you know, distinct personalities and just like everything else. It's a spectrum.

[01:52:44] I don't I never did have distinct personalities that emerge, but I had these aspects of my personality. They're just ready to step in to protect me from whatever horrible danger. They thought I was involved, which may have been good, you know,

[01:52:58] when I was seven, but it's no longer serving me. That energy is no longer serving me. So we had to get all those guys back into the herd. Because during that time, that's that's used as a defense mechanism,

[01:53:11] right? In order to deal with the pain to hurt the violence or whatever it is that traumatized you during that time of your life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I was because shows you the truth yourself and the truth

[01:53:24] comes out and however it comes out and eventually you catch on and away you go. So, you know, that was part of the reason I was driven, you know, to keep on working on what I was working on, you know?

[01:53:35] So other people maybe, you know, wouldn't be at that level or, you know, I was what I'd call a hard case. But, you know, some people they just want to connect more authentically with themselves or, you know, you don't have to be a drug addict, take ayahuasca.

[01:53:51] You know, if you want, if you feel there's something wrong with your life, you know, and you want to do something very strong medicine to deal with that, then yeah, ayahuasca can help you out with that. There's lots of other things as well.

[01:54:08] I'm not a, you know, there's lots of things that help. But it was nothing like ayahuasca. I don't believe that could have showed me that level of, I don't know, dysfunction or whatever you want to call it. You know? Yeah, exactly.

[01:54:23] This has been a real interesting talk because this is the first time I I think it's safe to say the first time that I've even spoken to someone personally that's gone through a ceremony. Now we've talked about and referred to the videos you can see online

[01:54:40] in the second hand, third hand experiences, but to speak with someone directly who's been through it and to get a little insight into what you were going through, your reasons for it in the beginning, your experience with it

[01:54:54] afterwards and the first hand insight that you have with dealing with the plant and then the intellectual aspect of it. All of that has been some fascinating stuff. Alan, thank I want to thank you for taking time out to break all of it

[01:55:09] down in layman's terms, you know, coming from fresh eyes and fresh years and somebody who hasn't undergone any ceremonies in and I know you have a book and I know you have you have a YouTube channel. I don't know how and also a website.

[01:55:25] So if you want to share a little bit about that and what you have going on with with. Sure, yeah, yeah. I'm the executive director of Iowaska Canada. So it's IowaskaCanada.com website, which is just basically an informational website.

[01:55:43] I'm the founder of the companionship of the sacred vine in Canada, which has been like I had mentioned the first legal exemption to serve Iowaska and shamanic ceremonies, not like Santodime or UDB ceremonies. So we've got that up and running, but we're not quite operational on that yet.

[01:56:03] I'm the author of Iowaska, the gringos guide that is just out on Amazon right now. I'm also working with a group of very talented people that are opposing an arrest, some arrests that have happened in in Canada that are designed to shut

[01:56:21] down or put a damping effect on Iowaska. So we're putting out some position papers on that like we have a white paper on enforcement to give them a background on what they're enforcing if they're busting somebody for Iowaska.

[01:56:38] So we're making recommendations to law enforcement officials about how they should handle these types of so-called offenses. So we're going to be putting out a position paper on Iowaska decriminalization in Canada, so let's see what else is there. Oh, yeah, we're starting. It's nothing we're doing.

[01:57:01] Iowaska Canada is starting up a podcast. All right. OK. Yeah, it's it's it's called the Iowaska file. So we're just working through it. We need to get that set up. Yeah, yeah, it was it was the overwhelming favorite name for it.

[01:57:20] And so, you know, we're just starting to get our interviews up and running there. So I'm saying within a month or month and a half, we will, you know, officially start putting out videos for videos. Oh, cool. Is it going to be people people talking about their their

[01:57:35] experience, their journey? Well, it's it's you know, it's it's a little bit beyond that because a lot of these people are very advanced doing advanced work and we want to bring out some of the issues around Iowaska.

[01:57:48] Certainly, you know, we've got my friend Gustavo from Brazil who's going to be talking to us about how normalized Iowaska use is in Brazil. Like there's an Iowaska church, you know, in every neighborhood down there.

[01:58:03] And nobody's dying and nobody's, you know, freaking out and run around the streets. You know, it's it's well integrated into Brazilian society, you know, so things like that. So we will be talking about some of the, you know, ceremonial aspects, of course,

[01:58:19] you know, but we're also examining some of the issues around Iowaska use and facilitating. We've got a very smart psychologist guy that's working on a set of standards and accreditations for Iowaska facilitators. And this is, you know, hearkening back to your question.

[01:58:40] OK, you know, you would be an independent examination of what this guy's, you know, you can't say, oh, yeah, this guy can serve by a was that guy can can or can't. You know, he doesn't have the experience of qualifications.

[01:58:55] But certainly for things around serving Iowaska, you know, how do you run your ceremonies? Do you have ambulance standing by? Not that you need one. But, you know, all of these safety measures and after care support, integration

[01:59:09] support, you know, how you're providing that and that sort of thing. So we're setting up a set of accreditation standards just for that reason to give people some level of confidence. Oh, yeah, this guy's been through the accreditation process. Here's his online profile. Here's what he does.

[01:59:24] Here's how the ceremonies run that sort of thing just to, you know, because just like you say, who do I go see? You know, is this guy. So we've got a lot of very, very interesting initiatives going on. Lot through Iowaska. That sounds like it.

[01:59:37] I'm looking forward to listening to the podcast also. And like I told you, I was I was diving into a couple of the videos that you had about my name is Alan. And this is what Iowaska wants me to tell you something to that aspect.

[01:59:55] And I thought it was very interesting and that was a good breakdown. I've watched the first two videos. It's Iowaska, Planet Prison and the reincarnation trip. So I've got a few more to get into with that.

[02:00:10] But I just I listened to the first two videos and I was like, yeah, that's right up my alley. I dig this. Yeah, I did. I did those videos a few years back in my Iowaska evangelism days because we always

[02:00:22] have it, you know, you find you find the medicine and fire. Yeah, yeah, this is everybody in the world's got to do this. All the world leaders. So I went through the Iowaska evangelism stage and I put out a series of videos

[02:00:35] called What Iowaska told me to tell you. So that's on the Iowaska Canada YouTube channels. The prison planet stuff is interesting. I started writing a book prior to the Gringo's guide. I wrote a book about that and I had a first draft.

[02:00:54] And when I say I wrote a book, you know, we wrote a book. Yeah, it was a collaboration. Yeah, it was a collaboration. And so I'm writing this book and then I was because, you know, Al, people have to understand what Iowaska is.

[02:01:10] And, you know, you got you got to put out this book first. And so that's when I started writing Iowaska, the Gringo's guide. So that's how that whole whole book came about was, you know, it's just like going into a ceremony.

[02:01:21] We deal with the basics first and then we get to the next level, next level, next level. But that whole prison planet stuff is heavy. Oh, one other thing that I forgot to mention with you, you know,

[02:01:35] in just in terms of people taking Iowaska, I'll just quickly because we've got to get going here, I guess. But, you know, Iowaska doesn't just deal with traumas from here now. It's genetic traumas, family lineage traumas, traumas that you're not even aware.

[02:01:54] Those are some things I dealt with in a ceremony as well. And, you know, if you look into epigenetics, those traumas can come from, you know, seven, eight generations ago. So, you know, you might not be able to point to something in your life

[02:02:09] right now that you should be feeling how you're feeling. But, you know, generational traumas, World War II, worldwide generational trauma, you know? And you know, that's not your experience, but epigenetics bears out that that trauma gets passed down genetically. Those markers get passed on. Iowaska is neurogenetic.

[02:02:28] It shifts, you know, your genetic profile for lack of a better unscientific way of looking at it. But this was shown to me. God, how long do we have? This was shown to me in an Iowaska ceremony once there's this huge line

[02:02:44] of power that I was close to and I was crackling with this energy and stuff. Right. And it's like, wow, what the frickin hell is this thing? You know, and I'm close to it. Right. I'm close to it. Well, later on in some ceremonies saw that same line.

[02:02:59] Right. And now I'm further away from it. And it's just a little line and she says, you know, reach out. Just pinch that. So I just reached out and and disengaged pinched that line, you know?

[02:03:12] So she was showing me kind of a direct way that how close you are to that emotional trauma Iowaska can can take you back and let you look at it. Anyway, on and on and on we go. So interesting stuff.

[02:03:26] No, we definitely, yeah, I would love to connect and talk some bit more about this. You can go on so many different layers and levels with this that you can't fit it all in an hour or two.

[02:03:39] I would definitely look forward to, yeah, connecting back, getting back in touch with you and and and letting you rip again. We'll have you on the show, Richard. We'll have you on the show. You see, here's what happens with me. I forget all this stuff.

[02:03:54] And then people ask me the questions and I go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That was like this. That was like that. So, you know, for me, for me, I love doing this because I get these questions

[02:04:03] and, you know, I've forgotten about that stuff, but that's a thing. You know? And and we all contribute at whatever level that we're at. And that's what happens in an Iowaska ceremony. That's what happens in society. That's what happens in human interaction.

[02:04:17] And, you know, it helps us all. So what we'll do after your first ceremony, I'll have you on. Yeah, sounds like a plan. Hey, all right. Alan, hey, thank you so much. And yeah, we're definitely going to keep in touch.

[02:04:31] And yeah, man, all the best, my best regards. And just keep keep doing what you're doing. It's been a lovely conversation. Conversation, Richard. And thank you so much for having me. Oh, absolutely. No doubt. I can't help but respect the man's enthusiasm for this topic.

[02:04:50] Can you blame him if this is something that has impacted his life as profoundly as he said it has the things that he was struggling with, the traumatic events that shook him up as a child, the alcoholism,

[02:05:07] the loss of his brother, the work that he was involved with, which he said over the years just wasn't aligned with his core value and who he was. A shaky relationship with his daughter and just struggling with his own

[02:05:20] inner conflicts and trying to get answers to what the hell is up with this human condition. Alan said he's tried therapy. He was trying to self help. He was trying a lot of different things, but nothing was sticking until

[02:05:34] he came in contact with this spiritual plant known as Ayahuasca. And I don't even think it's necessary for me to reiterate a lot of what Alan talked about because I think he did a pretty good job on his own,

[02:05:47] explaining and sharing with us his first hand knowledge and experience with this plant and the healing and transformation that he's seen from hundreds, if not thousands of people. And so if you guys want to follow up with him, if you want to check out his book on Amazon,

[02:06:05] the Green Goals Guide from Amazonian Ceremonies to New World Facilitators, which he says is that solid framework for anyone looking to understand the medicine from a North American perspective and all of its uses for trauma, addiction, recovery, who should use it?

[02:06:23] Who shouldn't use it? Safety advice, best practices. All of that good stuff is included. He has a website with information on everything to do with Ayahuasca. And then he also has a YouTube channel.

[02:06:36] So Alan, again, I want to thank you for opening up and sharing a few pages of your story with us today. It sounds like it looks like you're in a much better place. You're enjoying a new song from nature and also a loving, joyful

[02:06:52] and healthy relationship with your daughter. You're content and satisfied with the work you're doing and helping other people experience transformation and healing. So all the best, man, that's a beautiful thing. Keep being free. Keep being unique. You are a giant amongst us.

[02:07:10] So I hope you all enjoyed the conversation. I hope you guys took something away from this. It's ultimately up to us to work out our own path and to gather the resources, the knowledge, the information that we need, internalize it, materialize it.

[02:07:29] And once you start dissecting it and digesting it, then you can utilize it in whichever way you see fit. And so if you guys want to shoot us a line, if you guys want to share some thoughts, you know where to reach us,

[02:07:42] you can find the information in the show notes. We're going to catch up and do this again real soon. And before the candle completely burns out on this side, if you would like to be a

[02:07:53] part of the show and share your story or even a story of someone in your life that has impacted you in a positive way, you can always reach out to me via email. I'd be happy to connect until next time and very soon. Peace. Do. Do. Do. Do.

[02:08:20] Do. Do. Looking for a sign to know I'm on the right road. And seen no signs since Jericho.