Ayahuasca’s Medical Benefits
Although some want to try Ayahuasca for a different experience, say, transformation, others simply want healing. Yes, some patients who are not satisfied with their PTSD or depression medications turn to Ayahuasca. Others with terminal diseases like cancer also try it in hopes of improving their condition.
If you want to learn more about the wonders of Ayahuasca in the medicine field, read more on how efficient it is in treating depression, PTSD and cancer.
Ayahuasca cures depression The medicine reduces depression in the individual within two to three hours of ingestion. Quite similar to pharmaceutical antidepressants, this medicine seems to change concentrations of serotonin, the mood-boosting neurotransmitter in the brain. Another way it alleviates depression is by the action of its active ingredient DMT, the psychoactive chemical known to induce spiritual revelations and experiences.
Individuals with depression who turn to Ayahuasca find solace and solution in the substance. One of them is Kira Salak. Her experience is terrifying and enlightening.
Just like the other ayahuasca users, Salak saw visions. She found herself in a tunnel of fire. She heard wailing and saw men begging her to help them. Others tried to scare her that she will never get out of the tunnel, but she was fierce and strong enough to answer back that she’s not scared. At the end of the tunnel, she saw three thrones with shadowy figures. The devil was sitting in the middle, warning her that darkness will never end and that she can never escape to which she replied with I can.
Salak woke up and felt lighter and at peace. She saw the shaman welcoming her back and the following day everything was changed. I discovered the impossible: The severe depression that had ruled my life since childhood had miraculously vanished, Salak confessed.
Ayahuasca cured Salak’s depression and the experience made her feel lighter and free.
Ayahuasca cures cancer A number of Ayahuasca users who went to Peru returned home feeling revitalized. Some others tried Ayahuasca somewhere else and still get the same benefits of healing. Among them are Donald M. Topping, a former professor in Hawaii who was diagnosed with colon cancer and Margaret De Wys a writer who survived breast cancer. Donald and Margaret took Ayahuasca ceremonies in different places, but they experience the same cure. Both are now cancer free. They are just two of the growing number of individuals who claim Ayahuasca’s healing.
A Brazilian study conducted by Eduardo Schenberg, of the University of Sao Paulo, learned that Ayahuasca has the potential to treat cancer. There is enough available evidence that Ayahuasca’s active principles, especially DMT and harmine, have positive effects on some cell cultures used to study cancer, and in biochemical processes important in cancer treatment, both in vitro and in vivo, Schenberg wrote. Therefore, the few available reports of people benefiting from Ayahuasca in their cancer treatment experiences should be taken seriously, and the hypothesis presented here, fully testable by rigorous scientific experimentation, helps to understand the available cases and pave the way for new experiments.
Ayahuasca cures PTSD Some war veterans and soldiers who developed PTSD turned to Ayahuasca for relief. Some claim that the medicines they took failed to improve their condition, that’s why they travel to the jungle of Amazon for a new treatment and their trip was not in vain because they return home with a new perspective in life, lesser baggage and cleaner slate. The medicinal vine helps them clear their mind from suicidal thoughts, pain, and bitter experiences that were holding them back.
Ayahuasca helps PTSD patients conquer their trauma by activating their subconscious brain. It then reprograms the brain by reorganizing and neutralizing environmental triggers and symptoms. It also brings the traumatic experience to the conscious mind for processing and integration to one’s life with deeper meaning without replaying the emotional intensity that used to come with it. That’s why PTSD patients develop new and better perspective on the things that once haunted them.
Ayahuasca’s Health & Healing Benefits
Aside from treating PSTD, depression and cancer, Ayahuasca offers health and healing benefits with its transforming effects. It does not only strengthen one’s body, but it also reconditions the mind and spirit. Learn about Ayahuasca’s health and healing benefits in the following passages.
Expands Consciousness
Ayahuasca helps in expanding and deepening the known experiences along with one’s consciousness capacity. As a result, it benefits the individuals who consciously look out for exploring relationships, life and spiritual fulfillment. The Ayahuasca process lets one gain a better insight into the mental understanding of their life and reveals a deep understanding of their situations. The overall experience not only makes it hard to avoid the realities of your life but also opens the perceptions, increases awareness and lets one meet their thought process completely. At a psychological level, the brew enhances the feelings and perceptions, making an individual’s thinking, reaction, self-reflection and beliefs even more intense and vivid.
Among the individuals who enjoy this Ayahuasca benefit is Russ Binicki. Russ is a former soldier who survived the Vietnam War. His experience was quite traumatic. Three of his closest friends were killed in the battle and he was involved in several plane crashes due to mechanical failure. When he returned home he engaged in drinking, smoking pot and fights. He puts himself in danger as coping mechanism of the high intensity experiences he had in Vietnam.
He was in denial of his PTSD condition and anger related issues. He often gets angry easily. He gets angry when he drives,
while on duty, at home or even in public. His rage problems were terrible that he described his anger tendencies from zero to warp speed in a heartbeat. He also gets angry when his daughters are late on their agreed curfew.
Russ’ condition led him to Ayahuasca. He travelled to Peru to try it and his life was changed. He learned more about himself, was able to understand his behavior and eventually admitted that he has anger problems. His Ayahuasca experience opened his mind to the things that kept on haunting him. It gave him the strength to confront those terrible thoughts it in a different perspective.
According to Russ, his anger issues were due to guilt. He was devastated after losing three of his closes friends in the battle. He felt bad for making it alive and yet seeing his comrades in the battlefield lifeless. He also learned that his being strict about the curfew was also due to his experience in Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, when one gets late, it means he is in trouble. This thought is engraved in his mind. So when his daughters show up late, he easily gets angry. The anger was due to fears because paranoia struck him.
The Ayahuasca experienced enabled Russ to learn about himself and understand his behavior, which he thought was just normal. He enrolled in a PTSD program when he returned home.
Ayahuasca Self-Healing Benefits
Ayahuasca is often called as a healer due to the inner processes facilitated by it, that eventually leads to the initiation of psychosomatic and spiritual shifts in individual, physical changes, changes in habits as well as a release of addictive patterns. The experience inspires the users and helps them to work towards bringing a change to their lives, allowing a genuine transformation and self-healing to happen. The self healing comes from the deeper look into the ideas, realities, ideologies or beliefs as Ayahuasca is potentially powerful in supporting the knowledge about oneself. But, Ayahuasca is not an external force that intervenes and solves a problem inside a person without their own intentional contribution. The thing that makes it work on bringing a transformation is one’s own determination, motivation and intention.
Kirby Surprise shared one personal encounter with Ayahuasca that showcased the medicinal plants self-healing benefits.
One man had a major depression during graduate school while maintaining two jobs and raising a family. His depression was like a plague that kept him from joy and light. He struggled with work and his family. He even resorted to a medical professional for help. He took different anti-depressant medications and finally Zoloft. He was advised to maintain the drug for the rest of his life. However, it took a toll on his health and marriage life. He can’t sleep well and sex was difficult which affected his self-esteem. He tried talk therapy and other western medicine, but he still felt that something was missing. He was not whole.
It affected his mood and attitude towards his wife and work. Until he decided to confront his depression from within and heal himself. He studied shamanism and medical plants and went on to an Ayahuasca conference. He learned that UDV members use it and that studies showed that regular Ayahuasca drinkers were less depressed but more social and organized instead. There were no physical or mental side effects to long-term use. One of the deciding factors that convinced him to try Ayahuasca was the people he met at the conference. They admitted to be long-term drinkers of the Ayahuasca tea and for him, they were some of the most grounded, kind, sane and healthy people he met in his life.
He decided to try Ayahuasca despite his wife’s lack of support and he experienced something unimaginable and unexplainable. He saw lights, colors and visions. The images were beautiful and intense, it made him cry. Then the lessons came in, he realized that he was losing awareness of his body and felt the weight of how he treated his wife in the past years while he struggled with depression. The experience was sacred, painful and beautiful. He realized that he was so cold and angry. The Ayahuasca experience made him alive again, he can feel again and it filled him with gratitude and love. He wept and started sobbing, which awakened his wife who told him that he was hallucinating, but he told her that he was aware of what he was feeling. For the first time in years, he woke up filled with joy and gratitude. He started to appreciate his wife, family and work. What was on the verge of being torn down was restored. He is alive again and he is whole.
This story is a concrete manifestation of Ayahuasca’s power to heal one’s self.
Ayahuasca Spiritual Teaching Benefit
When it comes to spiritual aspirations, the Ayahuasca experience plays a major role of a spontaneous teacher. Without any claims to a specific phenomenological status about the source of the teachings, an Ayahuasca practitioner is able to have strong insights, revelations and a sense of getting guided. It is particularly helpful to bring a subject that you want to learn or understand into the ceremony. Ayahuasca will help open up those neuro-pathways to make learning easier. Aside from learning new ideas or skills, Ayahuasca may pave the way for a meaningful and deep divine experience.
Ayahuasca is popular in improving spiritual health. In fact, some religion ceremonies use this and refer to it as the vine of the soul. According to Sita, an Ayahuasca user, the experience affected her physically, emotionally and spiritually. It shifted her perspectives and perceptions giving her the most challenging experience and divine bliss. She considered it spiritual because her quest for it is to find meaning and surrender. Her experience revealed sources of creations and made her realize that there is someone out there with supreme power. Others may call it God, Allah or Buddha, but one thing is certain for her, there is a powerful force behind everything, which can’t be known.
Some Ayahuasca users felt that they died and live again. Some felt the divinity, others claimed to see God. Ayahuasca helps them understand humanity, find a connection, and feel the great power behind everything. For Ayahuasca users, the experience was something unimaginable and unexplainable. It altered their views about the sacredness of life and their purpose.
One study revealed that Ayahuasca can indeed improve one’s spirituality. One study found out that Ayahuasca users have high scores in Spiritual Orientation Inventory. They excel in all nine components which include transcendent dimension, meaning and purpose in life, mission in life, sacredness of life, material values, altruism, idealism, awareness of the tragic and fruits of spirituality. The score remains high even after the second assessment, which suggests that the use of Ayahuasca improves one’s spiritual health.
Helps Identify the Totality of Life (Transformation & Rebirth)
The vivid, intense or sometimes confused and chaotic visions associated with Ayahuasca serve to show a person the totality of one’s life, including the conscious and subconscious mind, behaviors, emotional reactions as well as their effects on their relationships. Sometimes, the visions often work as a factor of cleansing, allowing a person to process the visual imprints and the impact of TV, mass media, Internet and several other blockages of psychosomatic and emotional nature. The meditation-like visions can be anything ranging from simple reflections of a person’s life and situations that must be solved or healed to the visions of animal and plant spirits as well as astral entities working on the body and soul quite similar to a doctor. This eventually leads to one getting a complete picture of the elements of their life, relationships and difficulties as well as gain a better comprehension of the world. A lot of people take Ayahuasca for its realistic or vivid hallucinations and to gain an insight into the world’s and brain’s mysteries.
Martijn Schirp, one Ayahuasca user revealed that the Ayahuasca session turned him to be a believer. He saw visions that filled him with fear and loneliness. It was a pure hell. It hit him hard. He remembered seeing the interview of psychiatrist and psychonaut Stan Grof, where he admitted that he experienced to be a different kind of animals and a plant in one instant. Martijn did not believe him but to his surprise he experienced it. He felt like he was a haunted animal and the experience was so vivid and real. He saw the connection in the world, from the air he breathes, the food he eats, and trees and rivers that give life. When he came to his senses, he felt the pangs of pain at how humans abused the natural resources. He was disappointed that people failed to see the spirit of the mountains, trees and animals. He was broken hearted that the humans’ greed consumes the natural resources that money can’t buy.
The Ayahuasca experience raised his awareness and transformed his relationship with nature. He is now more sympathetic to the natural world.
Ayahuasca Increases Efficiency Benefit
The usual physical benefits associated with Ayahuasca are pretty astonishing. One of the core functions of the brew is the cleaning of the body and crossed energy straightening. This implies that at a physical and energetic level, it makes the body operate with as little impediments as possible. It makes your body perform everything more efficiently. This means either minimal is required for the maintenance of the status quo or higher benefits are extracted from the same input. It increases the energy levels and minimizes the need for sleep. During the ceremonies and during the dieta, one finds their energy levels all over the place.
Moreover, since the use of Ayahuasca is life changing it affects one’s efficiency. As it helps one come to his senses, discover his failures and learn from it, accept his mistakes and shortcomings, it also filled the emptiness with gratitude and love. When one feels good, happy and satisfied with himself, it resonates in his works and relationships. It produces a better person and worker. Thus, making one more efficient in everything he does.
For those who felt stuck with their lives that they can no longer give their best to their work or family, Ayahuasca can help you regain your wholeness for a more efficient you.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that Ayahuasca offers many benefits, be it in the medical field or health and healing. But is Ayahuasca legal? You’ll be disappointed because, in the U.S., this psychedelic medicine’s legal status remains questionable. Brews made with DMT containing plants are illegal in the country as it is categorized as Schedule I drug.
However, due to religious freedom in the U.S., there are legal Ayahuasca ceremonies. UDV members are allowed to practice Ayahuasca ceremonies because this medicinal plant is sacred for them. It is a sacrament that helps them heighten their spiritual understanding and perception. Furthermore, it brings the practitioners closer to God and enables them to experience divinity.
If you want to experience the benefits of Ayahuasca, you may try the UDV Ayahuasca ceremony or book a ticket to the jungle of Amazon. Try Ayahuasca to experience its amazing benefits. You will surely be surprised to find a better version of you.
