Nihue Rao Ayahuasca Retreat Preparation

And, so your journey begins Dear Pasajero [passenger en español]! We use this name to identify those who have chosen to venture into the jungle, to sit with Ayahuasca, and other Master Plants.  As you begin to prepare for your time with us at Nihue Rao, we’ve created a detailed overview of what to expect for your arrivals, packing suggestions, daily activities, etc. Once you’ve booked your retreat, please read through the entire document thoroughly and without distraction. The information below is important and will answer many questions you may already have around how you can begin to prepare physically, spiritually and emotionally for your time here at Nihue Rao Centro Espirtual.  We thank you for trusting us with your healing process and look forward to meeting you in person. Your arrival We arrange a complimentary pick up from either the IQT airport, or your hotel in Iquitos. At the airport, our driver will have a sign but sometimes they will call out your name, and/or say Nihue Rao (sounds like Knee-Way). From there, you will be driven by motor car to the center. Upon arriving at Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual, you will be welcomed, given a brief tour of the center, and shown to your room. Depending upon your arrival time there may be meal time for you to eat after settling, our last meal time is around 4 pm. If you plan to eat at the center please inquire with the manager regarding your timing so we prepare you in advance as to whether your arrival will coincide with meals. Meetings with Maestro Ricardo, the owner and head shaman of Nihue Rao, happen either Saturday or Sunday afternoon. During this meeting you will meet 1:1 with the Maestro [and our translator] to handle find payments, discuss your intentions, and be assigned a Master Plant Dieta. This is also a great opportunity for you to ask any questions to the Maestro directly 1:1 and bring any offerings from your hometown [if you have]. When booking your flights, we suggest you find an arrival day that lands on either Saturday or Sunday. These days our center does not have ceremonies and there is more space to settle and rest. By exception, we also allow for Wednesday arrivals if necessary. The Preparation Dieta 10 days prior to your first ceremony, it is vital to clear the mind and body of as many impurities, toxins, and intrusions as possible. However, the sooner you can begin your preparations the better. Preparations help you in your  approach to plant medicines providing your introduction to the medicine with a more “intact” energy. This will offer you more emotional centeredness and physical endurance for the long nights in the maloca for ceremony. We highly suggest you begin landing in a deeper meditation practice, as you will be spending a great deal of time in ceremony in meditation with the medicine. If you are new to meditation, try sitting for 10 minutes a day and working up to a half hour over the next 10 days.   In terms of food preparations, 10 days prior [if not even longer] we recommend adhering to a soft food diet. This means you stop eating:  And also refrain from all sexual activity. ALSO reduce –do not completely remove– the following: After your retreat, post care needs and conditions are important to take into consideration. Please see our Post Dieta guidance and plan your departure accordingly. Reminder: Please share with our facilitation team any existing or preexisting physical and/or mental medical conditions you have, along with the medications you are currently taking. It is strongly recommended that at least 3 days prior to your first ceremony you stop using any over the counter medications and/or supplements. Reminder: Please consult your physician regarding medical conditions which require pharmaceutical support. Make sure you provide yourself with the proper information and guidance before making any adjustments.  Logistics in life Take care of as much business as you can, ideally leaving a solid two-week window for preparation without business chaos interfering. Take care of as many lingering details as possible, such as finances, emails, bills, making arrangements for your animals, etc. Lastly, before you depart, think about cleaning your home or your room, clearing clutter, doing laundry, etc. so when you return your home feels clean and peaceful. You are preparing now for your return, so creating a soft, safe, and clear space to land will be helpful in your transition back home and begin your integration process.  Packing Checklist Be aware that you are traveling to the Amazon jungle. Dry season runs roughly from August to November and rainy/wet season from mid-December to mid-May. The jungle is more or less tropical which means high humidity coupled with high temperatures; for the most part.  Packing Suggestions:  For wet season: * We suggest bringing protective bags like Dry sacks for your electronics and varied sized Ziploc bags for your clothing and toiletries. Occasionally pasajeros [passengers] are visited by insects in their rooms so please be mindful of your belongings by keeping everything zipped in bags, and scented products in Ziploc bags. Jungle life!  Lastly: *ATTENTION: Please try to bring as little plastic or other items that can end up as garbage. There is no garbage collection here in the jungle, in the end everything is burned or sadly can also simply end up on the side of the road. In order to preserve and conserve this Amazonian region, please be as environmentally conscious as you can when preparing and packing for your trip.   Weekly Overview On Monday morning you will skip breakfast and participate in a  vomitivo. This is a drink consisting of master plant Oje, Azucena, and sometimes a tiny amount of mapacho (local tobacco). This purging ceremony helps to clear the physical body of toxins, prepares you for receiving your master plant, as well as preparing the body to receive Ayahuasca. The vomitivo may also help to reduce the purging during the Ayahuasca ceremony nights to come.  After your vomitivo lunch is

Making the most of an Ayahuasca Ceremony

What is Ayahuasca? Ayahuasca is the centerpiece of the Amazon’s ecosystem of ancestral plant medicines. Made by brewing together two plants —ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaf— for approximately eight hours, Ayahuasca is a powerful medicine for the body, but also for the mind, the heart and the soul. Physically, once ingested, the Ayahuasca liquid enters and purifies every bit of your body from the tip of the head to the tip of the toes: the brain, the heart and all organs, the nerves, and even the blood. Ayahuasca also energetically enters the compartments of your mind, namely the mental psychology, emotional function, memory, five senses and sleep and dream space. There, the medicine removes traumas, blocks and other negative energies and brings strength and opening as needed. With help from experienced shamans, Ayahuasca can heal all kinds of diseases: thyroid issues, drug addictions, diabetes, schizophrenia, depression and even cancer, just to mention a few. Spiritually, Ayahuasca is a doorway into the spirit world. The psychedelic trance or mareación that she provides takes you into the spirit world, where the roots of your ailments lie as energies. There, Mother Ayahuasca, the main spirit of the Ayahuasca medicine, guides you, heals you and even empowers you to heal yourself. Through visions and messages, the Mother brings up things from your spiritual weight and gives you opportunities to work through and let go of what you no longer want: emotions, traumas, pains, negative thoughts, blockages, behaviors and so on. In this way, she works with you to help you heal yourself. What is an Ayahuasca ceremony? To treat the medicine with the respect it deserves, we drink Ayahuasca in a ceremonial setting, and to see the visions properly, we drink it at night and in the dark. If we’re new to the medicine, we also drink it in the presence of an experienced shaman. An Ayahuasca ceremony generally has three parts: the set up, the work, and the wind-down. Note that the following description is how ceremony is run at Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual. To begin, every pasajero, one by one, goes up to receive and drink their Ayahuasca brew. The shamans then drink too, the lights are turned off and everyone waits in silence for the effect to arrive. Once the shamans’ effect has opened (30 to 45 minutes in), they take turns to sing their opening songs, to connect to their medicines and prepare for the work ahead. After this, the pasajeros that have no effect are given a chance to drink an optional second dose, helped by a facilitator. Here begins the work of the shamans, and facilitators take pasajeros to sit in front of their respective shamans for their healing song. The facilitator reads the pasajero’s intentions quietly to the shaman, and the shaman begins to sing. Once their 8 to 12 minute ícaro is done, the pasajero is guided back to their mat. This repeats until every pasajero has received their song (or songs, if anyone is also opening or closing a diet). Once everyone has received their ícaro, the ceremony continues in silence until the Maestro announces its closing. This is the wind-down time, and the remaining strength of the medicine should allow for rest. Once the Maestro closes the ceremony, a candle is lit, and everyone is welcome to stay in the maloca for as long as they like, and to converse quietly, sing or play instruments—always respectfully, as Mother Ayahuasca is still in the room and fellow pasajeros might still have a strong effect. Shortly after, the shamans will leave the maloca. Your working dose More Ayahuasca, more healing. Less Ayahuasca, less healing.More Ayahuasca, more visions. Less Ayahuasca, less visions. Maestro Ricardo Amaringo On one side, it’s true that the more medicine you drink, the more healing you will receive from Ayahuasca. On the other, since you will be doing a lot of your own healing, it’s important for you to be able to work comfortably during the effect, and this means staying centered and able to think with clarity while you are in the second stage of the medicine. So, generally, you’ll want to drink the most medicine you comfortably can—that is your working dose; you have a good effect, but you can still make decisions. Your working dose also makes it easier for you to understand the visions. It is your responsibility to find your working dose, the dose that is good for your mind and your body. Maestro Ricardo Amaringo You find your working dose through experience. As you sit for your first ceremony, the shaman will give you a cautious intro dose based on your body build. At the end of the night you should have a feel for how that dose was. If you were underwhelmed or bored, or had too short of an effect or none at all, up your dose a bit the next time. If the effect was overwhelming, too fast or it was generally hard to keep up with Ayahuasca, lower your dose. If it felt just right and you could think clearly, stay calm and converse with Ayahuasca, you found your working dose. Finding your working dose might take a couple of ceremonies and possibly additional guidance from the shaman at integration. Once you have your working dose, you have something safe to default to. If you ever want to drink more it’ll be a conscious choice, and you’ll go in prepared accordingly. Likewise if you want to drink less to rest. If the dose you drank is not enough to produce any effects for you, you have the option of drinking a second, smaller dose approximately one hour after the ceremony starts. Always be careful, though, as this can be unpredictable and prolong your effect until very late. In general, finding your reliable working dose and sticking with it is preferred to drinking a second dose. Mindset To drink the medicine we must bring two thoughts, no more: I’m going to drink Ayahuasca,

Guide to Master Plant Diets

What is a Master Plant Dieta? A master plant dieta, or master plant diet, is the process of receiving healing, learnings and spiritual medicine from a particular master plant. It is akin to continuously administering a medicine, day and night. As you diet a master plant for a period of time, you slowly connect with the spirits of that plant’s medicine. These spirits heal your body and help you work on your healing goals, and they, alongside Ayahuasca, guide your ceremonies. In a short retreat, a diet can significantly boost your healing. “There is only one solution to live well in this difficult world: the diet.” Maestro Ricardo Amaringo Besides your body, the diet also gets connected to your mind and dreams, so it is able to guide your thinking and even communicate with you in dreams. Dieting connects you to the root of the spiritual world, effectively making you more spiritual—that is, more aware of your spiritual self. As you become more and more spiritual by dieting, you experience improvements all across your life: in your physical and mental health, in your work, in your relationships, in your luck, in your projects, and so on. Dieting opens your mind and your heart, and with them, your life’s path. It is the all-in-one solution to living a better life in this world. Which master plant (or plants) you diet during your retreat will depend on your needs and goals. Some plants are fit for purifying the body and mind of substance abuse. Others are good for removing pains from the body and strengthening it. Others for opening one’s heart and connecting to love. A plant diet is started by drinking a small dose of a preparation made with that plant, and receiving an ícaro to open the diet, in ceremony. Depending on the plant you’re dieting, subsequent doses of the preparation might be necessary to keep strengthening the connection. To care for this growing connection as it gets established, a few restrictions are observed while dieting: no physical contact, no sex, no alcohol, no salt and sweets, no condiments, no oil, no red meats, and no milk. In stricter diets, no veggies and no fruits. A diet is closed with an ícaro as well. This mandatory ícaro protects the diet from food, sex, alcohol and other energies, so that you may now resume your normal life without harming the diet and its medicine. This ícaro also protects you personally, by covering you in light. Dieting is also the means by which shamans learn their trade, as there are healing diets and learning diets. Though both healing and learning is present in some degree in both kinds of diet, learning diets are geared towards learning shamanism, and they teach the ícaros and how to work with the medicine. They are also stricter and longer, starting at 3 months and going up to a year and more. Nihue Rao is one such master plant diet. The master plants are also divided in plants and trees, with the latter being stronger and more powerful, but requiring a bit more time than an 11 or 14 day retreat to connect. Trees also generally teach shamanism and have stricter restrictions. “A person who has a diet has light in their heart. This light guides them and protects them wherever they go.” Maestro Ricardo Amaringo To have a diet Dieting helps you heal and work on your goals while you’re going through your retreat, but that’s not the end of it. In fact, a diet is for life. Once you have that connection with the medicine spirits, they are with you for the rest of your days, guiding you and taking care of you. The diet now becomes part of your spiritual history; a good energy you now carry in your body. The diet also brings light in your body, and this light protects you from bad spirits and energies wherever you go, as they don’t like light and will refrain from coming near you. By making good choices and living better, you will even make this light continue to grow after your retreat. “To diet, there are three important points: patience, love, and faith.” Maestro Ricardo Amaringo Dieting well The better you diet, the more you will connect to the medicine and the more you will get out of your diet. The medicine spirits like to see three qualities in us while dieting: patience, love and faith. To care for your diet, put to the side all anger and doubt, and take care to always act and think with kindness and good words. If you get angry, or prideful, or mistrusting, you can block your diet. Think of it this way: the medicine spirits are of pure light, so they don’t enjoy being around negative attitudes. If negative emotions or thoughts come when in diet, reject them. As you refuse to react with anger, or mistrust, the diet itself will little by little clear these things from you, making you kinder, humbler, and more centered, and opening your mind—but you have to reject them. Have faith that your diet will get you where you need to be by the end, and be patient throughout your diet, however long. Treat others with love and kindness, but also your medicine, expressing your gratitude and appreciation to the diet and to Ayahuasca for what they do for you, both in ceremony and during the day. If you make an effort to observe these good behaviors, you will be rewarded with a powerful diet, and your experiences in the medicine will open up more and more. Aside from this, you can make a diet even stronger by taking further measures on your level of isolation. The minimum is to not touch others (including animals) so as to not get connected to their energies, but you can choose to cut down on conversations altogether. Or you can stay away from social media, or the internet in general, or even