There is so much misinformation, or incomplete or lazy information online regarding ayahuasca, tobacco, and the shamanic diet, that I have decided to share what I know from my own experiences working with a Shaman.
About Ayahuasca:
Ayahuasca has been used as a medicine for thousands of years, and as a Shamanic means of transmission and communication of healing and knowledge. We use it for the same reasons today. Approaching ayahuasca with great respect, responsibly and consciously, we use it to confront our deepest fears and anxieties, to purge our pain and attachments, to deepen our conscious understanding of ourselves, to enrich our minds and hearts with wider perceptions and experience the ecstasies of unity with the infinity of the universe.
Ayahuasca will physically clean or purge your body through vomiting and diarrhoea. The medicine extracts toxins, emotional scarring and blockages. Getting sick will sometimes coincide with a mental or visual experience, sometimes of what emotion or trauma you are vomiting up. This deep physical cleaning is not found with other medicines like peyote, mushrooms etc., and it purifies you to prepare you for deeper visionary experiences and a deeper understanding of the self.
These ceremonies can help you to bring unconscious and seemingly other-worldly processes to the surface, often bringing about life changing epiphanies and realizations. With dedication, the medicine can help all people, from the most sick to the healthiest and happy, to fine-tune themselves, to help study themselves and the life around them, to become more conscious and aware, to develop into the best they can be. It is a medicine, but also a tool. Shamanism provides the tools for you to learn how to best live your life from your own inner understanding through connection and union with Great Spirit, or as the Shuar of the Amazon call it; Arutam.
Tobacco:
Before drinking the ayahuasca, when the ceremony starts, the Shaman will serve tobacco. This is not tobacco as you usually know it. This is a strong, sacred jungle tobacco, an integral and very important part of an ayahuasca ceremony. The tobacco is brewed in a bowl with clean water, like a tobacco tea. This tobacco water is then inhaled through the nose. Making your hand into a bowl, a few drops amounting to about a tablespoon will be placed in your hand, inhale it slowly but sharply, ensuring it hits the back of your nasal passage. The tobacco will help give you strength and clarity and focus, to help ground you for the experience you will be having with the ayahuasca. Tobacco will also be offered at the peak of the ceremony, and is advised to take especially if you went through a difficult or harrowing experience or visions, as it will help regenerate and clear your mind.
Tobacco can be used daily as a spiritual practice, as an aide to meditation. A Shaman once said to me, “the Great Spirit wrote the book of life in the Tobacco.”
All one ever needs to know and more can be learned from much dedicated time spent sitting with the tobacco.
The Diet
To ensure you get the most out of your experience, it is important that a strict diet should be observed. As much fresh vegetables and fruits as possible are encouraged, and grains like rice or quinoa. The emphasis is on organic, fresh and alive foods, like salads, soups and stews, rice and steamed veg etc. There are some very important restrictions, Do Not Eat: meat, fish, dairy and eggs, highly processed foods like ready-meals or fast food, fried foods, excessive oils, strong spices like chilli, salt, citrus fruits, refined sugars, garlic and onion. These foods will interfere with one's sensitivities and uptake of the ayahuasca, and if eaten in the days before ceremonies can cause severe nausea after taking ayahuasca, so it is recommended to abstain for at least 7 to 10 days beforehand, but the longer the better. I recommend 14 days before and after the ceremonies to get the most out of it. Avoiding these foods beforehand will help heighten your receptivity to the medicine, and avoiding these foods after the ceremonies will help prolong the benefits that can be felt afterwards.
Abstinence from drugs like anti-depressants is essential, it is not recommended to take ayahuasca if you have been taking anti-depressants in recent months. Abstinence from alcohol and illicit drugs like marijuana, mdma, cocaine etc is also necessary. These substances all have strong energies and essences that will interfere with the ayahuasca.
Abstinence from sexual orgasm is also very important for at least 7 – 14 days beforehand. This abstinence helps to conserve vital life energy needed to engage with the ayahuasca, and will help you to focus and go deeper into the more profound of the vast layers of conciousness.
Purifying your body will help the medicine have a clearer path to work deeply on your mind and spirit. This diet, including abstinence from orgasm, would be practiced for longer periods by apprentices and those hoping to become shamans or learn as much as they can about shamanic ways. If you wish to attend these ayahuasca ceremonies regularly, and wish to work with shamanic practices in future, it is recommended to experiment with this diet in your daily life. After one month, huge increases in energy, focus, perception and mood will be noticed. One can deviate from the diet and always come back to it for ceremonies and the like of course, but adherence to this diet will greatly help develop ones sensitivity and awareness. The diet works well with daily tobacco practice and vast growth in consciousness will happen with care and attention to these practices.
I hope this information will be useful to any seekers finding it difficult to get the right advice.