Part two Preparation for your first experience

Welcome to Your First Plant Experience Part 2

This is an example of what should be sent to participants before. To help prepare them for the process.

Here is some information to help you prepare for the ceremony and will give you an idea of how our ceremonies are conducted and to help you with your first experience with the shaman and with the plants.

You are standing at the threshold of something sacred. You may feel curious, nervous, excited, uncertain, or all of the above. These feelings are welcome. This guide has been offered to help you ease into the unknown with as much clarity and peace as possible. You are not just showing up for an event—you are arriving at the altar of your own becoming.

Please do not fast on the day of ceremony, we know some people recommend this. But through many years of experience it has been proven that it is better for the participant to have ate something. You may eat food up until 12pm on the day of the ceremony. Please note, this is for night-time ceremonies, and you will need to staying overnight with the shaman. Most ceremonies start around 8-9pm in the rainforest.

This detail may seem simple, but it speaks to a deeper truth: the medicine works best when the body is supported, not deprived. A light, clean meal by midday gives your body the energy it needs to receive and metabolize the plants without interference. The overnight stay is not just for practical reasons. It also honours the sacred window that opens after the ceremony, a time when the veils are still thin and the integration is already beginning. The dark is mother’s domain. Night ceremonies allow the subtle worlds to open fully.

The reason you are attending a ceremony with the shaman is generally because a friend or relative has recommended you to the shaman. So, you would have already received from them is THEIR own experience of the plants.

This is important. Your journey is beginning through word of mouth, heart to heart and through those who have sat in this same space and opened themselves up to the great mystery. But their story is not yours. What they received, saw, felt, or purged may be completely different from what awaits you. The plants meet each soul where they are. They shape their teachings with infinite intelligence and precision.

Please remember that it was THEIR experience, and no two people’s experiences are ever the same. Expectation is one of the most common ways we limit what is possible. If you arrive thinking your experience should look or feel like someone else’s, you may miss the subtle, powerful ways the plants are already speaking to you. Come with reverence. Come with humility. Come with trust. The medicine will show you exactly what you need—not always what you want, but what your soul is ready to receive.

First-time experiences can range vastly and are often gentle and beautiful. They are not always the big, visual display of life-changing insights. Or the light show as some people call them.

This is often where the first lesson begins. When you surrender the hunger for a huge spectacle. While some people are granted visionary journeys of great intensity, others are welcomed with a softness, a subtle touch. Some feel only a calm presence. Others encounter a silent mirror. Do not dismiss the gentle. Do not overlook the quiet. Deep healing does not always come with fireworks.

As it is your first experience, it is usually about the plants getting to know you. This is a living relationship. You are not taking a substance. You are entering a communion with a consciousness that is deeply aware, deeply wise, and deeply compassionate. Like a midwife, she first feels your rhythms. Like a mother, she watches your breath, your fears, your hopes. She begins to calibrate herself to you. This initial meeting is like a sacred handshake.

If you can let go of the idea of what should happen, and drop into the experience that is actually happening, you will receive so much more. Allow yourself to meet the medicine with innocence. If nothing spectacular happens, be curious. If something subtle moves, honour it. The smallest shift in perception can open the door to a new reality. They cannot predict your first experience any more than you can, so be open to receiving what these plants decide is right for you.

This is the essence of the path: trust. Trust in the medicine. Trust in the container. Trust in the mystery. You are not in control—but you are not helpless. You are in collaboration with Spirit. Open your hands, your heart and your third eye. Let her work through you and with you.

The medicine is not linear. She does not follow rules of logic or expectation. What you receive is woven for you, and only you. Let your journey be sacredly yours. Many people want to share their dramatic explosive experiences, but they keep the gentle yet life transforming teachings inside. So, be aware of this.

The plants are often described as hallucinogenic, but this is not actually a good description. They are actually entheogens, which are more of an empathic and deep insightful plants that often can be accompanied by visual displays within the mind. These are not drugs to be consumed for escape. They are teachers to be communed with for revelation. The term entheogen literally means “generating the divine within.” These sacred plants open your inner temple. The visuals you may see are not hallucinations, they are symbolic languages from the subconscious, the soul, the cosmos. They are transmissions.

Most people do not have visual experiences outside of themselves within the ceremony room. Although it can happen, it is not usual. It is more of an inward experience.

Don’t chase the visions. Let them come to you if they are meant to. Some of the most powerful awakenings happen without a single image—just a sudden knowing, a flood of emotion, a deep inner silence. The plants reach you through sensation, through archetypes, through intuition. The real ceremony happens inside.

The plants are all about love, peace, acceptance, and connection, which deep down is what everyone is seeking, and they can often fill you with a deep sense of peace and bliss, allowing you to see the unimportance of the minor mind chatter and stresses we often fill our lives with.

This is their great gift. Beneath all the healing, all the shadow work, all the purging and clearing—there is this love. A love that is ancient and intelligent. A peace that surpasses understanding. A remembrance that you are already whole. This medicine is not here to make you more. It is here to help you remember who you’ve always been.

These plants, once activated within you, allow your mind, body, and consciousness to expand so you can unfold and find new ways to solve questions, problems, and dilemmas you have been having, and for you to reconnect to what is really important in your life.

This activation is not simply a momentary sensation; it is a reawakening of dormant pathways within you. Imagine the plants as ancient keys turning in the locks of your inner world, opening doors to rooms you didn’t know were there. Places where buried wisdom, forgotten memories, and long-lost truths are waiting. The problems and dilemmas that once felt tangled or overwhelming are seen from a higher vantage point. Suddenly, patterns are revealed, synchronicities become undeniable, and the puzzle pieces of your life begin to rearrange themselves in a new order—one that reflects your soul’s deeper intelligence.

Not just surface-level affection or fleeting emotion—but the primordial love that lives beneath the ego, beneath the masks, beneath the pain. The kind of love that doesn’t need to be earned or explained. The plants gently peel back the layers, guiding you back to your original essence. To the part of you that is love. Pure. Unshakable. Infinite.  They can often enable, guide, and inform you of new ways and behaviours, and can allow you to see clearly what no longer serves you in your life.

It may be subtle as an image, or a word, or a whisper. Or it may come with force and conviction, like a lightning bolt slicing through your illusions.  But the truth always comes. The old habits, outdated identities, and toxic relationships rise to the surface with unmistakable clarity. No more hiding. No more bypassing. The medicine shows you what needs to be removed from your life. Not to punish you, but to liberate you. And she does it with such fierce compassion, it feels like benevolent.

The plants are not, by any means, a drink-once, cure-all! But they often can feel like something life-changing has happened especially with the insights received.

This is so important to remember. These are not magic bullets, nor are they quick fixes for a lifetime of unconscious living. But they can be a catalyst for great change. They can show you who you are beneath all the layers. They can give you the visions, but you must walk the path. They can offer the mirror, but you must integrate what you see. The work begins even more after the ceremony, and the deeper your commitment, the more the plants will continue to guide you even long after the last cup is drunk.

The plants can often be quite physical within the body and can cause your body to shake on occasions, which we see as their way of re-aligning your nervous system, your DNA, and allowing your body’s chemistry and serotonin to rebalance itself so you can receive information on their frequency.

This shaking can sometimes be subtle and other times wild can often be misunderstood, but it is sacred. The plants work not just on your mind or spirit, but in the very cells of your body. They begin the rewiring, the recalibration, the energetic fine-tuning. It may feel strange, even overwhelming, but it is a sign that deep purification is happening. The shaking may be the trauma leaving. The tremors might be your energy system rebooting. Like a snake shedding its skin, something old is being removed to make space for something luminous and new.

Often, they allow you to remember certain situations and encourage you to feel into them and come to certain conclusions, or peace around them.

Unprocessed emotions rise gently or explosively to the surface. You may relive childhood moments or forgotten traumas—not to get lost in them, but to feel them fully and remove their grip, and finally find peace. The plants are master weavers. They don’t just take you back—they take you through, offering a perspective you may never have had before. Suddenly, the villain becomes a teacher, the wound becomes an initiation, and forgiveness becomes possible.

This merging is a sacred intimacy. The plant spirit does not invade you she blends with you. Like her vines are wrapping all around you and inside of you.  You may feel held, cradled, loved in a way you didn’t know you needed. The body becomes a sacred altar, still and surrendered, as the medicine does her work. In that stillness, layers drop away, and a luminous openness emerges.

Some have the plants directly telling them information, and for some it is an evening of a mad jumble of visual patterns and themes that do not make sense at the time… This too is medicine. Not all messages arrive as tidy answers. Some come as chaos—flashes of imagery, geometric codes, strange characters, strange places. It may feel nonsensical, like a dream written in an alien language. But trust—everything shown has a purpose. Some visions are seeds, meant to bloom later. Some are activations, meant to shift frequencies beyond your comprehension. Sometimes the understanding comes days, weeks, even years later. The plants teach outside the boundaries of time and logic. Your job is not to decode in the moment, but to allow yourself to stay open to what may come next.

Allow for her to be the portal through which you can see yourself—and your life—from a higher vantage point.  Like an eagle. The very act of opening yourself up to the plants begins to soften the rigid patterns of thought that once held you prisoner. Old mental loops loosen their grip. New, possibilities emerge. The plants don’t give you the answers—they show you the map within yourself that you forgot you had. They can enhance, enable, and allow your body’s chemistry.

Sometimes, that single night becomes a spiritual rebirth—a complete rewiring of how you relate to yourself, your past, and your future. A feeling of finally seeing yourself as a soul. What once seemed meaningless can suddenly pulse with purpose. Lifelong pain may finally be understood, seen from the eyes of compassion rather than suffering. The body, too, can feel the shift—layers of stress melting, energy flowing again where it had been blocked, a gentle recalibration that continues long after the ceremony ends.

People often wake the next morning with a sense of sacred awe, as if life itself has changed. Nature looks different to many afterwards. Somehow the trees seem brighter and when they shake in the wind you feel them talking to you. The flowers shine brighter, and you can sense their energy. It is as if the entire cosmos has whispered something to them only their soul could hear. It is only when these plants are used over time that we recognize all the important ingredients into our own healing and growth.

Like a wise teacher that returns again and again, the plants don’t just show you the truth once and disappear. Over time, they become allies—silent yet potent companions walking beside you as you evolve. Each ceremony builds on the last, deepening your connection not only to the medicine, but to your own inner knowing. Patterns unravel more easily. Intuition strengthens. The body becomes more attuned to the energies. You begin to notice that the medicine lives within you—not only during the ceremony, but in the choices, you make, the words you speak, the way you love, the way you listen to life. Outside of ceremony.

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