Support After A Difficult Ceremony

It is normal to have a difficult time during an Ayahuasca ceremony. The medicine challenges us on a physical, emotional and psychological level, often all at the same time. The process of healing is rarely a walk in the park but the accelerated process of healing that Ayahuasca offers usually involves going through a rollercoaster of intense experiences in a very compressed period of time.

But sometimes people experience scary, frightening or overwhelming ceremonies that can leave them feeling anxious, unsettled, disoriented, frightened or even traumatized. This is especially true if they experienced a lack of care or support from the facilitation team.

If this is you, please know that you are not alone. Ayahuasca is a very powerful medicine and not all ceremony settings provide a well-held space. I have worked with many people over the years who have been left deeply unsettled after an experience with Ayahuasca, both with traditional shamans in the Amazon and western facilitators in US ceremony circles. Talking through what happened with someone who understands the ceremony experience can really help.

How I can Help

First, I know this world very very well. I’ve worked at retreat centers in the Amazon and Costa Rica as well as ceremony circles in North America. I’ve undergone a traditional Amazonian apprenticeship and facilitated hundreds of ceremonies over the last 12 years. I’m also a professional psychotherapist who specializes in trauma healing so I understand both the psychology of the traumatic experience as well as the shamanic/spiritual dimensions to Ayahuasca that many therapists may not be keyed into.

Figuring out why this happened

I can help you to figure out what the underlying causes of the difficulty ceremony were and help illuminate why the ceremony may have gone the way it did. There is often a combination of factors that contribute to a challenging ceremony and diving deep into your motivations and intentions to sit with the medicine as well as your background and life history can really help provide some context as to what was may have occurred. Often there may be hidden insights from the difficult ceremony that may relate deeply to your life going forward or suggest unresolved and outstanding personal traumas and wounds from the past. Making sense of the experience can often become the springboard to personal growth and further healing.

I can also help you to understand what role the ceremony setting may have contributed as there are many subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which a ceremony spaces may not be set-up to really support people through a challenging experience with Ayahuasca

What to do now

Sometimes a couple of sessions of grounding, processing, and making sense of the experience can be enough to restore stability and provide a path forward. Time also often helps put the experience into its rightful place in the past without it intruding or impacting current life. But there are quite a few cases where ongoing support is needed for the foreseeable future. Sometimes things may have come-up in ceremony that may need additional personal attention, including ongoing therapy or other healing modalities. In rare cases, there may be a need for some kind of spiritual or shamanic healing to address what happened during the ceremony. I can help you to figure out what might be needed to resolve this situation and provide options for additional resources.

My Approach

• Shamanic & Psychological - I bring a dual lens of shamanic/spiritual understanding and psychological perspective on what can happen in an Ayahuasca ceremony

• Trauma Informed - In addition to my experience working with ayahuasca, I am also a trauma therapist. I bring an empathic trauma informed approach to help people work through difficult ceremony experiences and feel safe in their bodies again

• Guidance: I can go beyond unpacking the experience to providing guidance based on my direct experience facilitating ceremonies and my years of experience helping people through difficult Ayahuasca experiences.