Diversions consist of indigenous ceremonies and easy tours to interesting locations.
17 - Putting It Back Together
Referring to our three-part picture of personality, our program proposes using neurofeedback to develop participants' basic self-awareness and energetic regulation, and in this way better prepare them for a transformative experience.
Several days later we will use the Ayahuasca ceremony to modify traumatic memories and habitual patterns. This ceremony uses lucid dreaming, visions, music, and magic. Careful intent, hallucinogenic plants, sacred objects, herbal baths, spiritual cleansing, and purging all contribute to a sense of wellbeing that supports the transformation process.
Along with, and subsequent to these events we'll provide individual and group support based on Western psychotherapeutic, Eastern meditative, and indigenous shamanic techniques in order to help clarify, process, and integrate the insights that emerge.
The program's objective is to create an experience that includes all of one's faculties, broadly supports one's needs, and provides the soil for new insights to permanently take root and flourish.
* "Emotional memories are not simply erased. Oppressive negative memories need to be actively replaced by positive memories." Dr. Isabelle Mansuy, University of Zurich cellular neurobiologist. Quoted in Science Daily, May 11, 2008.
[ ] Muriel Turner, web page: www.seekingselfhappiness.com
[ ¡] Percy Garcia, web page: www.diosayahuascasana.multiply.com
[] The reporting of the death of an elderly woman in a ceremony led by Juan Uyunkar in 2001 mistakenly inferred Ayahuasca to have been the cause. My personal communication with two people closely involved in the case revealed that only a powerful tabacco-based decoction was used in the ceremony when the death occurred. There are no reports of deaths related to Ayahuasca, to my knowledge.
References
[1] Dobkin de Rios, Marlene, Visionary Vine: Hallucinogenic healing in the Peruvian Amazon, 1972, Waveland Press.
[2] Shanon, Benny, The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience, Oxford University Press. Portions of this book are available online at: books.google.com/books.
[3] Hoffmann E, Hesselink J.M.K, da Silveira Barbosa Y.W.M. 2001. Effects of a Psychedelic, Tropical Tea, Ayahuasca, on the Electroencephalographic (EEG) Activity of the Human Brain During a Shamanistic Ritual, in MAPS Bulletin, Vol. XI number 1, pp 25-30. Available online at: http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v11n1/11125hof.html.
[4] Phelps EA, LeDoux JE. 2005. Contributions of the Amygdala to Emotion Processing: From Animal Models to Human Behavior, in Neuron, October 20, Vol. 48: 175-187,
[5] Lord Meher, Vol. 20, p. 6742. Available online at: www.lordmeher.org/index.jsp?pageBase=page.jsp&nextPage=6742. Other Meher Baba material available online at: http://www.avatarmeherbaba.org.
[6] Duffy H. 2000. Editorial in Clinical EEG & Neuroscience, January, Vol. 31, p.v, p.vii.
[7] Dubé F. 2003. Shaman Bared From Using Ayahuasca Following Woman's Death, in National Post [Canada], Saturday, April 26. Available online at: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/dll/ayahuasca_canada.html
