060 | My Experience with Shipibo Ayahuasca: Learning to Trust My Gut (at Reunion Experience)
“Ayahuasca taught me that I don’t fully trust my gut. I don’t fully trust myself. And all of the information that my gut is sending to me is just sitting there. It’s unprocessed, it’s undigested.”
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PUBLISHERS NOTE: As of January 2024, I can no longer recommend Reunion as a place to experience plant medicine. See full statement HERE.
In this episode, I am sharing about my first experience sitting with Shipibo Ayahuasca, and my first time working with a direct lineage. This was a completely new medicine and experience for me, and despite going feeling disconnected to Ayahuasca, I had a very powerful and beautiful experience.
After 30+ sits with a different lineage of this medicine, I finally got to meet the spirit of Ayahuasca. I received so many beautiful treasures and gifts about trusting myself, healing my gut, and how to walk in reverence and respect.
In this episode, I talk about:
First impressions at Reunion Experience in Costa Rica
The Shipibo style of Ayahuasca ceremony
Receiving Ikaros (sacred songs) from the Maestras
Navigating my doubts and disconnection with Ayahuasca medicine
How I stopped resisting the medicine
Swimming in a Shipibo visionary state
Lessons on reverence and respect from Ayahuasca
Trusting myself & syncing my gut with my heart
Lettings go pre-conceived notions about Ayahuasca
Learning about the intelligence of the human body
“I was seeing Shipibo visuals and fractals everywhere. And honestly, it scared the shit outta me and I started fighting it. I just got the sense that I was entering a completely new world that I have never been in before and it was terrifying.”
LISTEN
“I felt her essence. I was in her world of these like wildly beautiful Shipibo visuals.”
Things Mentioned In This Episode:
Reunion Programming and dates - use MODERNREUNION when booking
This episode was produced in collaboration with FWI Media. Check out their beautiful work!
Where to find Lana:
I was introduced to psychedelics in my early 20s within rave culture, and few years later I began to use plant medicine ceremonially.
Many circumstances aligned leaving me shattered, and I began the journey of putting myself back together. Plant medicine & psychedelics saved me from depression, anxiety, and a life of feeling unworthy. This is now my life’s work and I have devoted myself to sharing psychedelics and plant medicines with others because I have personally experienced how effectively they can catalyze growth, healing and connection.
This idea for Modern Psychedelics came to me during a journaling session in early 2020. I was learning so much about psychedelics at the time (while experiencing the benefits firsthand), and I had a deep desire to talk about these topics with people in the field. Upon launching the Instagram community, the page grew tremendously over a short period of time and continues to have high levels of engagement.
I am a 3x certified professional life coach, and I work with people who want to better their lives by deeply integrating insights from their psychedelic experiences. I believe that we don’t have to spend our entire lives healing, and that the purpose of life is to live in the present moment.
Looking for a professional coach to support you on your psychedelic path?
Look no further! Along with being the host of the Modern Psychedelics Podcast, Lana is a 3x certified professional coach who works with people on the psychedelic path.
Podcast Transcipt
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60 - Reunion pt 1
[00:00:00]
Lana Pribic: In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing a trip report of my first Ayahuasca experience with the Shipibo medicine. I'm really excited about this. It's been about a month since this experience, and it was really powerful. So in this episode, I'm going to be sharing my experience at Reunion in Costa Rica with Shipibo Medicine. I'm gonna share the first of three ceremonies with you and watch out for part two coming soon where I'll cover the final ceremony and give you an honest review of my experience.
So let's get into it. When I say shipibo medicine, I'm referring to the cultural lineage from Peru that has been working with Ayahuasca for generations, probably thousands of years, and there's many different lineages that work with ayahuasca, and this is one that I haven't sat with yet.
Up until now, I had about 30 sits with an Ecuadorian brew. But it wasn't a direct lineage, meaning that I was working with Ayahuasqueros who have permission to serve the medicine[00:01:00] but aren't directly related to the lineage.
So I knew this was gonna be really powerful experience. I treated it like a brand new medicine because it was. And like I said, it was. The most powerful ayahuasca experience I've had yet.
So I wanna set the stage a little bit first and give you guys some backstory because I'm gonna be sharing with you guys where I went for this experience. And recommending medicine centers is not something that I take lightly at all, which is why I actually don't do it very often. I don't even feature guests from clinics or retreat centers.
This is very intentionally, even though several. Reach out to me every week. And that's because unless I have good reason to personally trust someone or know that I feel comfortable recommending people to go somewhere I'm just not gonna do it. I think it's a big responsibility. So I've also been working in the space for a number of years.
I used to work for a company that had retreat centers and I am very [00:02:00] well aware of how, websites and slide decks can look. Right and say all the right things, but then the people behind the company don't actually have integrity. So that's just some backstory. So when Tim from Reunion reached out to me, I had all the walls up, I had all the walls up, I had my guard up.
After looking at their deck, there were two things that really stood out to me. Number one, they're a not-for-profit medicine center. I don't think I've seen this yet. They're not for profit. And number two, they worked closely and directly with the direct lineages and medicine keepers.
So that definitely got me interested in overall I did get a sense that this was the pretty intentional space, but like I said, I know that websites can look right and everything can look right and everyone can say the right things and yet there can still be some discrepancy.
So we did hop on a call to connect in person. I felt good after speaking with Tim. Tim is a program director at Reunion and he [00:03:00] invited me to come for a visit. So I said I would think about it. He explained that they offer both ayahuasca and psilocybin experiences and he said I could choose either one to come for, so I said I would think about it.
I sat with it and honestly at this time I had just gotten back from doing Iboga. This was in November. I was integrating that a lot, and I knew that I would not do this for a long time if I did. I also saw that they had shipibo retreats coming up. So they work with like several different lineages.
And Shipibo was one in particular that I have been called to sit with for years after Iboga. I felt like I was done with Ayahuasca. I felt like iboga is my medicine. I'm done with Ayahuasca. I am just like going forward with Iboga, but I didn't wanna throw in the towel until I had actually experienced Shipibo medicine.
So I thought, okay, this could be a good opportunity. I thought about it, I felt into it, and I decided that I would hop on another call with [00:04:00] Tim and Karina. Karina is a senior program director there. After speaking with her, I was like, yeah, okay, let's do this. I felt really aligned with her. We shared a lot of the same sentiments around medicine work and she just had a great deal of respect and reverence and just came from a lot of love.
So yeah, speaking to her made me feel like, okay, yes, let's do this. So I booked in for April, 2023 and that gave me enough time to do some iboga integration. And yeah. So I'm gonna share with you my experience at the Wisdom Keepers retreat. So this is their like ayahuasca program.
So this was with Shipibo, Maestras, Ynes, Laura, and Lila from the Peruvian Amazon of the Lopez Lineage. So my main intention for sitting with Ayahuasca was actually to meet and experience the Shipibo medicine. I. Was in a really [00:05:00] beautiful space after, three and a half years of deep work with Ayahuasca at home in Toronto and then after Iboga, I had just been experiencing a lot of rapid growth, so I didn't have anything specific that like I wanted to work on. I was more so wanting to connect with the medicine and learn from it. So my intention was very open. I also wanted clarity on like my path with medicine moving forward. Is ayahuasca still my medicine?
Is there something still here for me? So my main intention was, To meet Ayahuasca and to just simply experience the Shipibo medicine.
And then during the first circle that we had at Reunion as a group, I did write down four intentions. So I wrote, show me health, show me love, show me wealth, and show me service.
So my first impressions of Reunion when I arrived on day one was like, wow. Wow. I remember I arrived there at the front desk and [00:06:00] they like gave me like this water bottle filled with cold water, which was very refreshing cuz it was so hot. And I was like, wow. Beautiful attention to the, to detail. Like it was just such a nice welcome and they like took me to my room on a golf cart.
And I was just looking around at the property and I was like, I I pinch me. Do I actually get to be here for the next week? It was absolutely breathtaking. so refined, so well maintained, like it was right on the water. I just couldn't believe that I was gonna get to spend time here.
Like everything was beautiful and newly renovated and fresh. It had this like really open concept, organic. Earthy feel to it. And I started crying a little bit when I got to my room cuz I was like, I can't believe I created this opportunity for myself. This is so special that I get to be here in this beautiful place.
So that was my first impressions. I was just very excited, but also still a little guarded and still okay, let's see what this place is all [00:07:00] about. Let's see. If they're actually walking the talk.
Day two was the first ceremony day. So we were going to go through three shipibo ayahuasca ceremonies, the first one on that day.
So they offered gentle movement classes every day, which was just my favorite. I was so stiff coming. To Costa Rica from six months straight of working my butt off, like loving what I was doing. Not complaining, but I was working really hard. My body was stiff. I had definitely neglected taking care of the body.
So the gentle movement in the morning with overlooking the ocean and like the ocean breeze just like caressing your body. It was amazing. It was amazing and just like really put me. At ease. And then we had medical checks. I didn't really have any issues or concerns, and then we actually got to meet the Maestras, so this was really intense for [00:08:00] me and unexpectedly so I actually started crying when they walked into the room.
I dunno why I was so emotional during this trip so far. . So when the Meisters walked into the room, I started crying because, You can just like sense the fucking power these women hold.
I'm gonna interview Karina and Julian from Reunion and Karina is their, cultural bridge in Costa Rica. So she. Works directly with the Maestras in any programming that they do in Costa Rica. So she'll share a lot more about the culture and traditions and, speak into that more.
But I will say that Maestra Ynes, who is, quite the, wise woman, you can see that just by looking at, her age and the wisdom in her eyes, she. Was sent into the jungle in Peru by her father, who was a powerful maestro when she was 13 years old, and she was sent into the jungle alone for an entire year, [00:09:00] and when she walked into the room, you could see oh my gosh, that this woman just knows things that I don't, and she has so much to share. So I think I was like really overwhelmed with the feeling of how intense this week was going to be. But yeah, it was really nice to be able to meet them and to be introduced to the style of the Shipibo ceremony. So the way that it was set up a few things about the Shipibo ceremony.
So the main thing is the these are the sacred songs that are, channeled from the Maestras from the medicine. And they're actually, these ikaros are sung to the medicine. To the spirit of the ayahuasca, and they are the medicine. They are the thing that heals. And it was explained to us that this is a central element, so there's no other music other than the ikaros that the maestas sing.
We also sit in darkness. So after the medicine is served, we sit [00:10:00] in darkness, no candles or anything, which was new for me. And in Shipibo, you also sit up during ceremony, which was also new to me, I'm used to the freedom of laying down.
So ceremony one was meant to be like an introduction meant to acquaint us with the medicine, the space, the micras, and the style of ceremony.
Ceremony two was meant to be the big one, and then ceremony three is the arkana. So the arkana is the closing ceremony that is meant to stitch us up after the spiritual surgery that we have just undergone. So we also received flower baths every day, which was so special before ceremony.
The Maestras prepared these beautiful flower baths and cleansed us. And this was actually meant for protection before each ceremony.
So let's get into the first ceremony. This one wasn't too exciting. There's not much to report here. I was actually mentally and emotionally like in a.[00:11:00]
Good place that I didn't even know what I wanted to get out of this first one other than to be acquainted with the medicine. But I took a very low dose about A quarter of a cup even. And I really didn't have it in me to ask for another cup. I was so tired and exhausted from just like life in Canada and working so much.
My body was aching. I actually got a sunburn. So I. I honestly, I didn't even really wanna be in ceremony that night. Like I was just so tired. So there's really not much to report. I think I had a little purge. The Maestras came around and, delivered their ikaros to each person individually.
So each person got three ikaros, one from each of the Maestras that. Was so special and so beautiful. That was definitely the highlight, but it was a very gentle ceremony for me. They closed the ceremony and I decided out of the group [00:12:00] of 17, I was the only one that decided to sleep in the temple. I just, I loved it so much.
I slept in the temple with the beach waves in the background and the wind and yeah, I loved it
The next day I just went for the, for a swim in the ocean. And even though it felt like nothing happened, I looked at myself in the mirror and I could see how different I looked already and I was just like, oh yeah, medicine is amazing.
Like I already looked less inflamed. I looked so much more alive and awake in my eyes, and there's like more color in my face. It was just already starting. I was already starting to see the effects. No ceremony on this day, but we did have an intention setting workshop, which was very helpful. I got a lot of clarity that I wanted to focus my intentions around health, embodiment, feeling comfortable in my skin, and releasing any like residual shame around my body and my appearance.
And yeah, I just felt a lot [00:13:00] more clear going into the next ceremony. This was a really, Helpful workshop. And then we had a beautiful embodiment workshop focused around dance and breath work with the beautiful Tanmaya. But it was a chill day. We got to rest, hang out by the beach, swim and just have fun boogie boarding.
So the second ceremony was day five. This was where a lot of stuff happened for me. I still honestly had a lot of doubts going into this one about ayahuasca being my medicine. I really felt disconnected from this medicine. Still. And yet, like I said, it ended up being my biggest ceremony.
It was just like it was beautiful beyond beautiful, like the most beautiful of my life. My intention going in was actually show me what needs to be revealed. And this was a recommendation from the intention setting workshop that we did, because I just felt a little bit like. Open and confused at the same time. So I just made my intention, show me what needs [00:14:00] to be revealed.
I was just sitting there in ceremony after taking a larger dose, and I was just thinking nothing's gonna happen. Just like the first ceremony, nothing's gonna happen. I just, I don't think this is my medicine anymore.
And then I started to feel the effects of the medicine slowly coming on. And I was like, okay, shit. So I went to the bathroom cuz I got this message that was like, this is when I could still walk this message that was like, go to the bathroom to cleanse and then we'll travel. So I was like, okay, strapping in.
And then wow, the medicine started taking over me. My body started to feel like very hot and heavy, and I felt like I was melting into the mattress. I've never experienced this before, but it felt like my body was not my body, and I started getting a lot of visuals, like open eyes, closed eyes. I was seeing like shipibo [00:15:00] visuals and fractals everywhere. And honestly, it scared the shit outta me because the brew that I'm used to is not very visionary. And I actually started to feel very afraid at this point, and I started fighting it, and I started resisting it. I was like trying to regain control of my body and I like sat myself up and I looked around and I was like looking around for someone to help me and I just got the sense that I was entering a completely new world that I have never been in before and it was terrifying.
So I panicked. It was too new, it was too unfamiliar for me. I fumbled around for my red flashlight and I wanted to call for help. I couldn't find it. Like I was just a mess. I didn't know what was up and what was down. So I actually just like verbally called for help. And someone came to me and it was Mariana, one of the beautiful facilitators.
[00:16:00] And I just explained to her what I was feeling. I was like, my body doesn't feel like mine. I'm really scared. And she reminded me of something that I already know, that the medicine wants to feel welcomed and embraced, that the medicine does not want to be resisted. It was time to embrace the medicine and to let it in, and this helped me so much.
It really helped me and everything changed for me. After that, I eased up. I remembered to trust the medicine, and I welcomed it and I was like, okay, welcome. You're welcome here. You're allowed to be here and show me what needs to be revealed. I went back to my intention and what was revealed was actually Ayahuasca and her realm.
So remember this was my big intention. I had felt like I hadn't met this medicine yet truly, and I finally felt her presence. I felt her essence. I was in her world of these like [00:17:00] wildly beautiful shipibo visuals. It was like a visual experience that I was a part of that is, It's hard to describe how beautiful it was cuz it's something I've never seen before.
But I felt the technology that is shipibo. In the background, the Maestras were singing, the ikaros making their way around the room. And that was guiding everything and the temple was amplifying all of that. But I felt that the, the darkness and the ikaros and the Ayahuasca and like just the wholeness of the experience was a very specific technology that is the shipibo technology so I felt like I was being like welcomed into this medicine
I went back to show me what needs to be revealed and what I got was reverence and respect, so I felt this Intense love and [00:18:00] gratitude to be at the feet of these mistress and to receive their medicine, and I felt how special it was to be in that moment, experiencing this gift that they were sharing with us.
They were sharing with us their culture. They were sharing with us their medicine. And their mastery. And that felt like such a gift to me and I felt so grateful. And I got all these like insights around how the Maestras are not objects to be, used or flaunted, or appropriated , that their work is sacred, that their culture is incredibly sacred, and to experience it is like such a privilege, an honor and a gift.
And I just felt so much love in that moment. It was really beautiful. So I went from feeling really afraid and scared, welcoming the medicine in, and then realizing how sacred this medicine, this technology is.
So I started getting these lessons around [00:19:00] reverence. So to come from reverence, it's to come from love to share with reverence, is to share from love, to speak from the heart, to live, from the heart, to speak from love.
So at this point, my journey was really about experiencing the medicine, which is crazy cuz that was my intention. But it was just about being with this medicine and like being in its realm. It was really beautiful and it wasn't like it was just visuals like it was.
A dimension that holds the shipibo technology. That holds the shipibo medicine. I felt really lucky to be in that world and to have that world reveal to me My presence was really strong here. I was just really present with the medicine. I was just there. I remember I started to bring awareness to my breathing, and it was the slowest it had ever been in my life.
I, my body was so relaxed. I was breathing so slow. [00:20:00] I felt so at peace. I felt so much love. I felt so humbled. Oh my God. Incredibly humbled to be in that room and just in awe. It was, wow. It was incredible. And
To summarize that, I would say like the shipibo medicine was revealed to me and it demanded my respect and reverence. It was like, it felt like a little welcome initiation. If you're gonna, if you're gonna be here, these are the rules. That's what it felt like. So finally, ayahuasca came to me and this was like the fun part.
She finally came to me and she was like, all right, you have me here. What do you want me to help you with? I might as well help you with something if I'm here. And I was like, okay. And I went to like my go-to, I was like, help me with my heart. And she was kind of like, what do you mean?
There's nothing you need help with there. Your heart is perfect. There is nothing I need to do to your heart. Like you've already done that work. It's perfect the way it is. Our [00:21:00] attention doesn't need to go there. And then pointed at my gut and was like your gut, however that could use some work.
And then she basically said you don't fully trust your gut. You don't fully trust yourself. And all of the information that your gut is sending to you is just sitting there. It's unprocessed, it's undigested, and showed me this like visual of the gut and the heart and how they must be in sync, how they need to speak to each other.
And this like heart, gut synergy is where I will find my power. That was, that felt like I was receiving like the next like code for my like healing journey and like the next part of, the work, the next part of what I [00:22:00] wanted to work on and what's gonna really help me work on. I was like, of course the heart and the brain need to speak to each other.
And this actually continued into the third ceremony, which I'll share about in the next episode. But, What else was happening here was that this shipibo, ayahuasca medicine was revealing herself to me. And I keep saying herself, not because everyone refer ayahuasca as a she, but because oh my gosh, it felt so like feminine.
But like she revealed her majesty and beauty like majesty beyond like queen level. Like majesty and power, but she was also asking me to drop all of my preconceived notions of this medicine and to let go of the other medicine. So I had gone into the space with all these like ideas around how Iboga was my only medicine from now on and all of this stuff.
And she was like no. [00:23:00] Let go of any ideas you have of other medicines because you're in my space right now. So I just laid back and I breathed and I took it all in slowly. And since I was near the end of the line in the circle, the Maestras came around and I was having a hard time sitting up and Mariana told me to sit up, even though it was really hard because it would give me strength, like the Ikaros would give me strength and they really did.
So I received the beautiful Ikaro again, one by one. It was so sacred and. Actually the next day, Marianna, so Marianna works with the Maestas in Peru. She supports them at their home retreat center. So she's really, connected with them. And she said that all they sing about is like flowers and trees and nature and how much nature just loves us and wants us to bloom.
Oh, I love it. So yeah, the rest of the night was just like so peaceful. I was just like breathing and feeling [00:24:00] into the intelligence of my body. Like I received this like huge cheat code, like heart, gut, synergy equals power, right? I'm sure. Yeah. The solar plexus, right? The gut is where we hold our power.
But I was really, Coming to understand how intelligent the human body is, and I was just sitting there like listening to my body and feeling it breathe and feeling it operating and worth working, and I just felt like how gentle this ayahuasca was in the way she was teaching me after I was actually able to surrender.
And I think the longer we are on the medicine path, like there's always like deeper ways that you can surrender and this was a medicine that asked me to surrender even more deeply than I had ever done before. And I think once I was able to surrender and like really let her in, it was like the loving embrace of this medicine that allowed me to just be with it and with the teachings.
And I just, I felt so much love in the room and yeah, it was really [00:25:00] beautiful. I woke up the next day in the temple and I was alone again, and I started crying again. I dunno why I was crying so much, but I was just like, wow. Wow. That was incredible. I'm definitely not done with ayahuasca. I have so much to learn still.
And I felt her the night before being like no. Like you come back here, you come back here. We still have some work to do. And I think like the Shipibo path, the Shipibo medicine opened up a whole new world for me, and I was definitely starting to feel the call of the Shipibo path. I felt very much like, oh my gosh, I have a lot to learn here.
Like I just got an introduction to this realm. There's so much more in here. Yeah, that was just very clear to me. And oh my gosh, ceremony number three, so much more happened. I'm gonna share about that in the next [00:26:00] episode, and I really can't wait. It really built off of this one, but that's like the first part of this experience at Reunion.
In the next episode, I'm also gonna give you my honest review of this experience At this point, I was still very much like feeling everything out. I was definitely a lot more trusting and able to see how the facilitators worked. But I was still very much like, Hmm, can I send people from my community here?
I'm excited to share the, my review with you guys in the next episode. I hope you enjoy this. If you guys wanna reach out to Reunion, so remember they have both Ayahuasca retreats which they work with direct lineages, so Shipibo, the Quechua, the Huni Kuin.
And then they also have psilocybin mushroom retreats and that is guided by their amazing facilitation team. I think I'm giving away my, the results of my review here, by the way, I'm speaking about [00:27:00] this. But yeah, they have both of those and you can reach out to them, check out their programming.
They have retreats every month, and if you wanna get in touch with them, let them know that you heard about them through modern psychedelics, and you can actually use the code MODERNREUNION to book yourself in. And it's really important that you use this code because what that does is it actually takes a hundred dollars from your booking and it's gonna put it into a scholarship fund for our community.
So it's a modern psychedelics. And Reunion Scholarship Fund where we can actually use the money in that scholarship fund to send someone in the modern psychedelics community to reunion. And this is, someone in financial needs. So it's really beautiful that they have this option. So hope you enjoy this episode.
Stay tuned for the next one, and I will see you there.
