Casa de la Luz · Ayahuasca Blog
Ayahuasca as Therapy, Integration, and Psychomagic
"As we lose ourselves, we forget that the words to find our way back have always been there."
At a time when therapy is searching for something more artistic, more magical and more spontaneous, ayahuasca and entheogens in general are emerging as a possible answer, one that could take us to new frontiers of the human psyche and the universe we live in. After years of sitting with this medicine, I want to share some reflections on what it can offer as a therapeutic tool, why integration matters so much, and how an unusual art called Psychomagic fits with it so naturally.
Can ayahuasca and psychotherapy work together?
Occasional psychotherapy outside the ceremony can be a valuable companion to ayahuasca. After a journey the mind is more malleable, more aware and more awake to what has happened, and that is a good moment for therapeutic work. It is well documented that entheogens promote new neural connections, but those connections may need a stimulus, and integration has to go beyond the plant itself. Mixing psychotherapy into the ceremony is different territory. It is ground where we are only beginning to set guidelines, and it may not be right for everyone. It would be wonderful if a therapist could feel what the participant feels, or even sense what they are thinking, with the help of the medicine. That would be extraordinarily difficult for a human being to achieve, but perhaps not impossible.
The traditional way of working with ayahuasca has mechanisms that not even the shaman or guide can fully analyze. Some maneuvers work for certain things, and the guide does not always know exactly what was done, because they were moved by archetypes or energies beyond themselves. That spontaneity and mystery should be protected, along with a healthy distance from rules that would standardize the ceremony.
The teacher who shaped my understanding of this was Kuyay, whose work was always aimed at the unconscious and was strikingly simple and direct, nothing like the approach of most psychotherapists. When someone asked her to change the music, she answered, "Tolerance!" When someone desperately begged for tobacco, she said, "Patience!" She used short, simple phrases, each with a specific tone of voice, and they landed with great force. It made me realize that not everyone under the effects of the medicine can process, let alone sustain, a long conversation like the ones in a psychological session. Sometimes people cannot speak at all, because the plant blocks them.
I once worked with a woman from Vietnam who wanted to tell us something about her womb, which she said was hurting. Each time we asked what else she felt, she vomited just as she was about to speak, and this happened several times. She never managed to tell us what it was. This is where the ability to awaken visions comes in, to see symbolically what is happening, something a skilled shaman can do with ease. Perhaps someone in the future will find a way to combine the two therapies while respecting how brief, or even how symbolic, the conversations in a ceremony can be.
The language of the unconscious
The soul, or consciousness, is magical and mystical, not rational. It responds to symbols, sensations, smells and things that already live inside it. Metaphor and metonymy are said to be its two most common languages. Psychological science tells us that when we become "aware of" something, it moves into the conscious side of the mind, but I am not convinced it works that way. What we call the conscious side is really an isolated section of the unconscious interpreted through words. To me, the unconscious is a kind of consciousness we cannot easily translate into rational terms, yet one that sends us messages constantly and guides us at a very deep level.
Carl Jung said that the soul cannot be the object of our own judgment and knowledge, but that judgment and knowledge are objects of the soul. He called the part of the psyche that identifies with the ego and with collective opinion the Spirit of the Times, the voice that convinces us only the rational is real and that we are masters of our own reality. The Spirit of the Depths taught him the opposite: that he is only a servant, and that his will is held within a greater will, the unconscious.
Alejandro Jodorowsky said it even more boldly in a 2001 interview with El País. He argued that psychoanalysis comes from medical science and tries to interpret the unconscious in a rational way, which is exactly where it fails. In his view, psychoanalysis should be practiced by artists who learn to speak the language of the unconscious, rather than forcing the unconscious to learn ours.
A night with "Nieves"
One of the most instructive experiences I have witnessed involved a retired American psychologist, whom I will call Nieves, and her son. It was one of the first ceremonies I ever led. We spoke beforehand about how to take the medicine and what to expect, they rested, drank chamomile tea to settle their stomachs, and we began. Five people were present, along with a helper from France who had experience with Kambo and other medicines.
Because it was her first time, Nieves received the minimum dose divided into three smaller portions, given gradually. She had mentioned occasional low blood pressure during exercise, which is not a serious risk, but we chose caution. After the second dose we waited about an hour, and still she felt nothing. Nearly three hours had passed. When we offered a third dose she looked at me with frightened eyes, worried that the effects of all the doses would pile up. The issue was never the amount of brew, only the number of times we had given it.
Right after the third dose we gave her a simple piece of advice: if the effect felt too strong, she only needed to open her eyes and it would become easier to manage, and we would be right there. She told me later that this was the moment everything began. It gave her the trust to surrender. It was the key to the riddle, the kind of detail that cannot be planned and that is somehow dictated to the guides.
We honestly thought she would purge and feel little else. Instead she spent most of the night in the bathroom, not wanting to disturb anyone, and we checked on her as gently as we could. At one point she told us the plant appreciated our care but asked us not to distract her any longer. It did not sound like her own voice. We left her alone for the rest of the night, offering only incense and tobacco at the bathroom door, and in the morning we told her the sun was rising and it was time to come out.
During the twelve hours of her journey she was taught a method of self-healing: tapping with the pressure of her fingers on different parts of her body, using one finger or several as it felt right, and holding the pressure for as long as the skin would yield. She used it on swollen glands under her chin that had bothered her since 1990, and they disappeared after a few sessions. She described it as a kind of shamanic self-Reiki. Each of us can receive our own instructions, both personal and global: what we are good at, what we love, how we can heal, what blocks us, and why we see things the way we do.
There is a sensitive part of our memory and belief system that responds to certain phrases or gestures and lets the medicine do its work. A good guide can direct that point of attention, not only with words, but with smell, touch, and artistic or shamanic gestures.
The art of small gestures
Another time, a friend was struggling to purge. He had not eaten well beforehand and could barely finish his second cup, moving restlessly and trying to vomit without success. Sometimes a tiny spoonful of ayahuasca helps in a moment like that, but this time we sensed he only needed the smell. I placed a few drops in his cup, sat quietly next to him as if meditating, and then said, "Smell this, mae." He recognized it instantly, and the powerful purge that followed was exactly what he had needed.
This is the territory of the placebo, which is where shamanism itself begins. The art of a shaman often lies in details like these, and sometimes it is hard to know whether a maneuver is real or simply a way of capturing a second of attention and using it for the person's good. When someone is under the effects of ayahuasca their suggestibility is very high, so the guide must interfere as little as possible, let the plant work, and when intervention is needed, do it with great delicacy. People have told me that we did exactly what was needed in the moment, whether it was laying a Shipibo healing cloth over them, using fire, candles, essences, incense or perfume, or simply a gesture of the hands. Under the medicine we learn to see beneath the layers and to feel the intention behind every act. Messages travel from soul to soul.
Psychomagic: therapy as art
"If you want to have something you have never had, you have to do something you have never done."
Psychomagic is a therapy rooted in folk shamanism, tarot, theater, curanderismo, psychoanalysis and healing through art, and it draws part of its knowledge from the world of dreams. A psychomagical act recreates a trauma or impulse in reality, in a healing way. The writer and linguist Marianne Costa calls these "healing fictions," and it resembles psychodrama. It was invented by Alejandro Jodorowsky, inspired by shamanism, and presented in its early days as a "panic" therapy, meaning one that includes terror, beauty, humor and the explosion of everything. Its foundations do not come from the medical sciences, which is why they differ so much from ordinary therapies.
A classic story illustrates how it works. A patient of the famous Mexican healer Pachita, a thirty-year-old man distressed by his baldness, was told that to regrow his hair he had to collect a kilo of rat droppings, urinate on them to form a paste, and cover his head with it. Rat droppings turned out to be hard to find, so he ended up buying them weekly from a rodent laboratory, and it took a long time to gather the full kilo. When the day finally came to make the paste, he realized how gullible he had been to believe something like this could work. That moment of distraction made him face his real worry, and he accepted himself as he was. He never performed the act, though some acts must be carried out to the letter.
Pachita herself was a channel for a spirit she called "the little brother," said to be none other than Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor. With her knife, cow lungs, bags of blood and human vertebrae bought from a hospital, she performed metaphorical operations that felt entirely real to those who received them. She was an artisan of realities, and her work became the foundation of Psychomagic and of related therapies created by the Jodorowsky family, such as Psychoshamanism, Psychogenealogy, Psychoritual and initiatic massage. I like to call all of these expressions of what I think of as Psychoart.
Psychomagic speaks four main languages, which mirror the main aspects of a human being: the intellect, where ideas come from; the emotions; sexuality and creativity; and the body and matter. It teaches our rational side to speak the language of the unconscious, not only through words but through acts, photographs, images, smells, sounds, tastes and touch, which is remarkably similar to what ayahuasca does. To begin with, the ego resists, clinging to its perpetual state of protection. But simply diagnosing the act, reading about it, and thinking of how to carry it out plants a small seed in consciousness.
When Psychomagic met ayahuasca
One of our first experiments combining the two took place during a private ceremony with a friend who had traveled from New York to Costa Rica to live the experience, along with several Costa Rican friends. It was an intense night in which we became different animals and things, but strangely, nobody purged. The other participants felt dissatisfied with themselves. To help, I taped a note to the bathroom wall that read, "This too shall pass." In Psychomagic this kind of small joke can loosen the grip of a big ego, or of people who cannot let go, which makes purging harder. I lay back in my place and visualized each of them reading it, and all three were able to purge once they saw the note.
The last one to read it kept the paper in her wallet and later moved to Chile, the country where the first Psychomagician was born. Exactly one year after her ayahuasca ceremony, she was told she was pregnant. The day she flew back to New York, we found ourselves in the middle of a magical event: "the day of the egg," when scrambled eggs and gallo pinto were being given away to everyone in Juan Santamaría Park in my hometown of Alajuela. We had not gone there for that, only to say goodbye, and the coincidence was beautiful. The egg is a deeply mystical symbol. In the tarot, the High Priestess incubates an egg in which she gathers her spiritual energy. Perhaps my friend had released so much energy through the plant that she was able to begin gathering it again. That was her true nature, which ayahuasca showed her.
Finding my own path
Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna, the Colombian anthropologist who earned his doctorate at the Institute of Comparative Religion at Stockholm University, advocates a multidisciplinary approach to ayahuasca, and I believe it is always the wisest one. He is one of the few researchers who does not frame ayahuasca as therapy, contributing instead through his books, his films about shamans and his research center in Florianópolis, Brazil. Born in Caquetá, one of the traditional ayahuasca regions of Colombia, he discovered later in life a passion that had been part of his life since birth. It is why I believe literature, psychology, yoga, meditation, hypnosis and any other discipline can enrich our work with this medicine.
From my first ceremonies I felt a deep calling to work with ayahuasca and to wait for my turn. I knew I had to learn from other arts, and poetry entered my life. Since childhood I had tried to tune into altered realities through lucid dreaming, and I had a certain ease with it. I wanted to fly, drive fast cars, visit places I had never seen. When the time for ayahuasca came, I knew I carried an intuition that could help me channel this medicine, and I did not want to force anything. I waited for certain events in my life to pass and give me the freedom I needed, and I continue the inner work to this day. I took ayahuasca many times over a period of seven years, and my second ceremony remains the most memorable.
Years later, while recovering from surgery after a violent altercation with a neighbor, I watched The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky's esoteric masterpiece, with a friend. The film felt strangely like the visions I had already experienced with ayahuasca. The next morning I woke up feeling that something very deep inside me was evolving for the better. I discovered Psychomagic, Alejandro and his artistic work. I have rewatched the film many times, including the version narrated entirely by Jodorowsky, and I always find something new. It helped me understand my ayahuasca experiences far better, and I realized that Alejandro had, without intending to, invented a therapy that works like ayahuasca without taking anything. I spent years drinking the medicine without fully understanding what was happening, and finding Psychomagic gave me the material to go deeper. As Jodorowsky once said, "They tell me I am a fraud. Well, if I am, then I am a sacred fraud."
Creating the right container
When offering ayahuasca therapeutically, prior contact is essential. A good guide takes the time to speak with everyone, in a group or individually, before beginning, to build trust and to prevent problems that might arise during the ceremony. Physical contact also matters: hugs, joining foreheads at the moment of the dose, and the laying on of hands. It is better when everyone gets along beforehand, because the ceremony is group work and we drink to rise together.
In my experience, private sessions for one or two people are ideal. The inner journey is more personal and direct, with fewer distractions, and the journeys tend to be longer. They are best held with a trusted companion and advice from an experienced person. A carefully selected group of four or six people can also be very powerful and healing if done well. Larger groups, from five to twenty or slightly more, can work beautifully too, as long as there is enough human support for the number of participants. Live musicians add a great deal, playing drums, guitars, didgeridoo, maracas, leaves, and even instruments like the sitar, the fujara flute or the hang, along with animal and nature sounds. Any instrument, or simply a voice, can recreate the effects of the icaro, the sacred healing song of the ceremony, although this is not always a rule. Having a psychologist, doctor or nurse present would also be a welcome addition.
Honesty about medical and psychological history is not a formality. This medicine is very powerful, and hiding a condition or medication, or forcing a ceremony, can put your life at risk. There have already been fatalities because people concealed information. Panic attacks, epilepsy, schizophrenia, psychosis, bipolar disorder, heart disease, high blood pressure, ulcers and hernias do not mix well with ayahuasca, and anyone with them should be excluded from formal ceremonies, with microdosing as an emerging alternative. I would add that certain personality disorders, such as borderline, narcissistic, histrionic and antisocial presentations, deserve more careful study, as from what I have seen they can produce neutral or negative results with ayahuasca. I say this from my own perspective, not as a clinical psychologist. The need for control, the difficulty accepting therapy, and intense emotional swings can make a ceremony harder, and the right support for those people comes from psychiatry and psychotherapy. None of this means anyone is beyond help. It means that screening and honest conversations before a ceremony are a form of care.
What ayahuasca is, and what it is not
Ayahuasca does not give us answers to the great existential questions, like reincarnation or what happens after we die. It also teaches that there are things we have no right to know, and that we are still human and should remain so. The medicine is not a hallucinogen, because hallucinations are based on nothing, while ayahuasca visions are tied to the individual or collective unconscious, and we never lose consciousness. It is like being in two places at once. Nor is it a magic cure. It is a very powerful tool that requires follow-up and attention. The immediate effects, such as the energy the next day, the lightness of body and mind, and a happiness with no apparent reason, are real, but the most important effects arrive over the long term. Its purpose is to bring these experiences into daily life. Without integration, a ceremony would be sterile. The magic is not in drinking it hundreds of times but in what changes in our lives afterward.
One of the experiences that taught me this most deeply was seeing my late uncle, who died of cancer when I was sixteen. He appeared beside me with his familiar, cheerful smile, and there was no doubt it was him. I asked whether it was really him, and he did not answer. I do not know whether such visitors are truly the spirits of those we have lost or something generated by our mind together with the medicine, but the healing is real either way. My uncle, a National Scout Guide, taught us about nature and survival and took us camping, fishing and swimming at the farm. I remembered a trip to Manuel Antonio beach where we fished and watched the sunset all together, six male cousins. In that moment I felt the pain my family still carried, and the responsibility to honor his memory. I also saw that my family held a grudge because I had not attended his funeral, which I had avoided at all costs. It was time to begin healing.
The ego death is another common effect, and it can feel like truly dying. People who do not know this beforehand can become very frightened and ask for help or believe something has gone wrong. There is a strong detachment in the chest, a sensation like fainting, and a generalized pain mixed with anguish. It cannot imitate everything about death, such as the void a person leaves behind, but it gives us an idea of what death is. The desire to heal can lead a person to do unimaginable things, and that is the force that should guide us.