Grandmother’s Calling: An Ayahuasca Story

I also began practicing box breathing regularly to calm down, refocus, and sleep. Box breath is a simple but powerful technique: inhale for four seconds, hold for four, exhale for four seconds, hold again for four, and repeat. Even typing it out relaxes me. When experiences or events are challenging around psychedelics, you most often need to just relax, breathe, and not fight it, so I made sure I could relax effortlessly. Pairing this with meditation, I was in a “zen” state of mind going into it.

Ayahuasca is known to be a little “jealous” too, so I also cut my use of cannabis completely for over one hundred days before the ceremony and psilocybin about a month before. The retreat suggested stopping all cannabis or other drug use for a week beforehand and two weeks after, but I was already on a moderation break, so I stuck with it. Sober Rob was barreling towards a date with destiny.

A few weeks beforehand, the dieta began, a kind of spiritual and physical cleanse that can vary from shaman to shaman. Always follow the guidelines you are given. Seven days out, I cut red meat, pork, pasta, bread, and caffeine. Water became my only drink, having at least two liters a day. Three days out, I ate mostly vegetables and soup with a little chicken while cutting out spices, garlic, and hot sauce. Finally, one day before I was fully vegetarian, feeling lighter physically and emotionally.

Visiting Grandmother Ayahuasca

The retreat was run by loving, experienced facilitators, and the ceremony itself was run by traveling shamans from the Yawanawan tribe of the Amazon. There was almost a 1:1 ratio of participants to sitters. We were made to feel very safe and comfortable. Tapestries lined the big great hall we were in, and everyone had a nest of blankets and pillows to see them through the night.

The excitement and curiosity were almost too much to bear at this point and completely overtook any sense of fear. I was already there; no turning back now. We did a series of breathwork exercises and meditations to build the egregore (“collective consciousness”) and begin to shape the ceremonial space that we would all share over the next 12 hours. I just kept repeating to myself: accept and surrender, whatever comes up, be thankful and appreciative.

After everyone had been served the medicine, we sat in dark stillness with only the flames of candlelight flickering. I stared into the candlelight and explored my mindstate, looking for any telltale signs of the trip to come. The soft glow of the candlelight began to stretch out and expand; the corona of light had been only an inch or so before, but now reached the walls of the room. That’s when the music began.

There’s no way to capture the experience in words, but I keep trying. It was mentally, visually, and spiritually profound. The icaros played and sung by the shamans felt sacred and alive; the medicine responded favorably, starting with closed-eye rhythmic visuals that kaleidoscoped around with each beat of the drum. Then came open-eyed bliss and wonder. The room, the people, and the very air around me were alight with sacred geometry. Multi-colored triangles, octagons, and tetrahedrons all stacked and twisting on top of one another, creating an infinite architecture. It was as if I could see for a moment the very structure of reality, and it was utterly and simply beautiful.

At times, I’d realize my mouth was hung wide open in pure awe of the whole experience. I would smile with my whole soul so big, it would hurt my face, and I would try to shut it before getting sucked back into the magic of the moment. Tears occasionally rolled down my cheeks, and Grandmother, in her own way, spoke to me through symbolism and color, light and emotion.

She said, “Everything is okay, you know? There’s no need to worry or stress all the time.” I felt for the first, and maybe only, time I can remember a true sense of relaxation and presence. I had no worries, no concerns, no anxiety, no projects to work on or stuff to do, no identity to manage. I was just me, and I was everything, and everything was me.

After ayahuasca had shown me the beauty of the cosmos, we went inward together, and the experience was still visual and stunning, but the introspection settled in. One striking example of this is when I found myself standing on an asteroid or some big piece of rock moving through space, worried about my life and what an impact I had made. Everything I have been working on or trying to build was all condensed and smashed together into a little rock, and I threw it out into space from where I stood. It floated onward at a comedically slow speed out into the nothingness, where it vanished. A primal fear of death arose to replace it. I thought, could all my work and effort in this life have been so meaningless?

But the medicine was playing a little game with me, it seems, because a moment later I realized that I won’t actually die because my sweet little daughter will live on for me, and that’s the important part. It sounds obvious saying it, but the depth of these realizations and the impact they made were intense and tearful. I’m a stoic family man in general, but the way this love for my daughter felt in that moment still lingers now; it was complete. The medicine had cracked me open to show me something I already knew, but apparently had not fully “felt”.

From that point onward, different vignettes and things played out from my life, interactions with family, past relationships, work life, friends, and more. I would observe and try to accept things as they were or forgive people for anything I held against them, and more importantly, forgive myself, something I realized I didn’t do often enough. When things got difficult, I would box breathe and think of my daughter and my loving wife. They were like a spiritual blanket throughout the entire experience.

My second night with aya followed that same pattern, with a bit less of the pure joy and wonder from the first. I can’t help but think Grandmother was pleased with the preparation and work I put in beforehand, or at least acknowledged it by letting me see the beauty of the universe before the work began. I learned the next morning that my experience was unique; some had almost nothing happen, others had much more challenging nights, or found themselves in the bathroom and/or hovering over their bucket too often.