The Ayahuasca Integration Journey: From Ceremony to Daily Life

In this episode of the Ayahuasca Integration Podcast, David Vox introduces the concept of Ayahuasca integration and its significance. He emphasizes that those who embark on Ayahuasca ceremonies are part of a small, unique group called to do deep, sacred work. David shares his personal journey with Ayahuasca over the past decade and highlights the profound transformations that can occur, not only during ceremonies but also in the months and years that follow. He explains the importance of integration, which starts from the moment one commits to the ceremony, and underscores the need for support and community in this process. David also previews the next episode, which will delve into scientific research on Ayahuasca integration, revealing common challenges and the necessity of proper support post-ceremony.

00:00 Welcome to the Ayahuasca Integration Podcast

01:30 The Profound Journey with Ayahuasca

02:47 Pre-Ceremony Integration: The Journey Begins

04:39 Personal Healing and Transformation

07:50 Understanding Integration: Becoming Whole

13:28 The Bridge of Integration: Embodying Change

18:37 The Importance of Community and Support

21:53 Conclusion and Next Steps

The Call Before the Cup

by David Vox

I want you to stop for a moment and feel the weight of what you’ve stepped into. Out of nearly eight billion people walking this planet, only a fraction—about 0.4 percent—have ever sat with ayahuasca. A fraction inside a fraction. You are already inside the circle before the circle has even begun. This is not random. This is not a hobby. Something inside you heard a signal and turned toward it.

Most people never get this far. They read an article, they hear a podcast, they see a documentary, and they keep moving. You did not. You paused. You started searching. You booked the retreat. You crossed the invisible line where curiosity ends and participation begins. From that moment on, the medicine began working on you—even before you ever touched the cup.

The Work Starts Long Before Ceremony

People think integration starts the morning after the ceremony when you’re still glowing or dizzy from visions. In truth, it starts the moment you say yes. The very act of booking, of committing, of wiring the deposit, flips a switch in your subconscious. Weeks or months before you arrive at the maloca, your life begins to reorganize itself.

Maybe you notice old fights flaring. Maybe you’re crying over things you thought you’d outgrown. Maybe you’re furious at a partner for no obvious reason. It feels like your life is coming apart at the seams. It isn’t. It’s being prepared. Ayahuasca doesn’t want a tidy surface. She wants what’s buried. She will shake loose what you’ve hidden from yourself so that by the time you sit down on that mat, the work is already halfway done.

I’ve seen this happen again and again, not just in clients but in my own life. Years of working as a transformational coach taught me to expect it, but even now it still surprises me how fast it happens once the decision is made. You can’t cheat this stage. You can only surrender to it.

My Own Proof: The Throat Infection

Just a few weeks before one of my most powerful retreats, I came down with the same throat infection I’ve had since I was a child. I had already had my tonsils removed, but the infection kept coming back year after year—like clockwork, like an echo. It was so bad I could barely swallow. I wanted to cancel. I told myself I’d go next time.

But a client was flying from Phoenix to Spain to join me at this retreat with my Colombian shamans. He’d invested time, money, courage. How could I not go? So I dragged myself to the mountains, sick and exhausted, telling myself I’d sit in the back, do nothing, just endure.

That retreat changed my life.

We were in teepees in the cold Spanish hills. Night air biting, cedar smoke curling, the stars harsh and brilliant. The shamans looked at me and said, “Ayahuasca is our antibiotic from the jungle. Don’t worry.” I was not convinced. When I drank the first cup I made a bargain with her: “If you can heal this, I will go all in on this work. I will create my platform around you. Just heal this.”

Within an hour I could feel the energy moving. By the second cup I could swallow without pain. By the third cup, the infection was gone. But the real healing wasn’t just medical. It was emotional.

During that night I saw clearly: this infection was decades of unshed tears, bottled since childhood, locked behind my throat because crying wasn’t safe in my foster homes. Every winter the infection came back as if my body was begging me to finish the grieving I’d postponed. In the teepee I sobbed for hours, a flood I’d been holding back for 30 years.

I walked out of that retreat with a new throat. I haven’t yet seen if it’s permanent, but I know that something fundamental shifted. Ayahuasca had done what antibiotics never could—she had gone to the root, not the symptom.

Integration: Not After, but Always

This is why I tell people: the work is not after the ceremony. The work is life itself. Integration begins before you drink and continues long after. The Latin root of “integration”—integrare—means “whole, complete, untouched.” This is not an abstract definition. It’s the actual job.

When you integrate, you are not adding more to yourself. You are retrieving what’s been lost or exiled. The most alive parts of you were probably forbidden early on: your boldness, your joy, your sexuality, your voice. To survive, you cut them off. In ceremony you glimpse them again. Integration is weaving them back in, stitch by stitch, until your outside life matches your inside truth.

I don’t see this as self-improvement. I see it as self-recovery. Nothing needs to be invented. Everything is already there, waiting for a place at the table.

The Bridge Between Identities

There’s a moment after the purge and the visions when you feel empty. It’s one of the hardest parts of the whole journey. You’ve released your trauma; you’ve forgiven your parents; you’ve cried for the child you were. Now what? Without your pain as anchor, who are you?

This is what I call the bridge of integration. You stand between two identities: the self defined by wounds and the self that’s emerging without them. Most people try to sprint across the bridge or run back to the familiar pain. Few have the patience to stand in the middle and let a new self take form.

Crossing this bridge isn’t theoretical. It shows up in your daily life: a job you can’t tolerate anymore, a marriage that no longer fits, a friend group that suddenly feels toxic. If you rush this stage, you recreate the same dynamics with a new costume. If you stay, breathe, and build slowly, you start to inhabit a life designed for your whole self rather than your wounded self.

The Homework Nobody Wants

Ayahuasca never assigns the homework you’re eager to do. She assigns the ones that scare you. In my case, that meant giving away my luxury belongings, leaving a high-status job, confronting an abusive foster family in Norway, and confessing every secret that still had power over me. None of it was glamorous. All of it was necessary.

Over time, every difficult assignment dissolved a layer of shame or guilt. With each one, a new channel of energy opened up. I didn’t just feel lighter; I felt more authentic, less at war with myself. This is why integration is spiritual work in the truest sense. It’s about putting your daily life in integrity with what you’ve seen in ceremony—no matter the cost.

Community as the Crucible

When I first started this path, I was lucky. The retreat center I attended didn’t just host ceremonies. It ran daily integration groups three to five hours long. Every participant got to speak. Every participant got mirrored. We weren’t left alone to decode visions in isolation.

This was the difference between a peak experience and a transformational process. The relationships I built in those circles became my root system—psychologists, shamans, yoga teachers, doctors, and fellow seekers from all over the world. Ten years later, many of them are still in my life. We went through our darkest nights together. We celebrated our breakthroughs together. Without them, the medicine’s lessons would have scattered like sparks into the night. With them, they took root.

Re-Parented by the Medicine

Over a decade, ayahuasca reparented me. Some weekends I was a three-year-old sobbing for safety. Other weekends a rebellious teenager raging at authority. Slowly she introduced me to every state of consciousness I had exiled. This was not regression. It was repair. Each time I integrated one of those younger selves, I gained access to more life force, more freedom, more originality.

This is why I say integration is not a workshop but a relationship. A relationship with the medicine mirrors your relationship with yourself. It teaches humility. It teaches discipline. It teaches that visions mean nothing without embodiment.

Building a Culture of Integration

By the time I had sat more than a hundred ceremonies and supported hundreds of others, I began to see the same patterns repeat. It didn’t matter if the participant was a hedge-fund manager, a schoolteacher, or a trauma survivor. The early phases of ayahuasca were wild and revelatory. The real challenge was what happened after.

The Numbers No One Talks About

A global study of over 10,000 ayahuasca drinkers was conducted across multiple countries. Within that data set was a focused group of 1,630 people who were asked specifically about integration. More than half—53 percent—said they struggled after the ceremony. They didn’t just have trouble sleeping or feel mildly out of sorts. They felt lost, fragmented, unsupported, and sometimes destabilized.

Let that sink in. More than half of the people doing this sacred work are suffering afterward without proper support. The ceremonies are powerful. The medicine is powerful. But without the right scaffolding, it can leave people floating between worlds, unsure of who they are, unable to land.

That study confirmed what I had been witnessing for years. It was not enough to offer the cup. It was not enough to guide someone through the night. If we cared about human beings and the spirit of the medicine, we had to build an actual culture of integration around it.

Why I Built the Ayahuasca Integration Alliance

Out of that recognition came the Ayahuasca Integration Alliance. It started informally—small groups, one-on-one coaching, private conversations with facilitators who were worried about their guests. Over time it became clear this needed to be a platform, not a hobby. A living ecosystem of therapists, coaches, shamans, and community members trained specifically in integration.

This Alliance is not a fan club. It’s a lattice of human beings who understand both the indigenous roots of the medicine and the Western psychological frameworks needed to metabolize it. It exists so that nobody has to do this alone. It exists so that integration becomes the default, not the exception.

We also developed a specialized training for those who feel called to become integration coaches themselves. This training is not about adding more theory to your bookshelf. It’s about learning to hold a human being in the most volatile phase of their transformation—the in-between, the bridge, the moment where everything they believed has come apart and the new self has not yet formed.

What Real Support Looks Like

Support is not simply a hotline or a Facebook group. Real support is structured. It is ritual and conversation. It is witness and accountability. It is also pragmatic: helping people design their day-to-day lives so their nervous system can keep up with their new awareness.

When I was lucky enough to train at a retreat center that offered daily integration circles, I saw firsthand the power of a group field. Five hours a day of honest sharing with psychologists, shamans, yoga teachers, and ordinary seekers. No hierarchy. No preaching. Just the slow communal digestion of experience.

That was where the visions stopped being entertainment and started being life. That was where relationships formed that still anchor me a decade later. Without that kind of support, integration becomes guesswork. With it, integration becomes culture.

The Long Arc of Re-Parenting

Over years, ayahuasca didn’t just heal my body or give me visions. She re-parented me. She gave me the developmental experiences I never got as a child. She let me be an emotional toddler, a furious teenager, a bewildered young adult—and then guided me to integrate all those states into one coherent person.

That’s why I tell my students and clients: don’t rush. This is not a one-weekend transformation. This is a long arc of becoming. If you respect that arc, if you build community and do the homework, the medicine will meet you at every stage.

Integration as Embodiment

Everything we’re talking about here—preparation, ceremony, post-ceremony, community—is ultimately about embodiment. Visions are easy. Embodiment is not. It means changing how you move through your relationships, how you use your voice, how you handle money, how you parent, how you work. Integration is not something you “think about.” It’s something you enact.

This is why I emphasize wholeness over novelty. You don’t need more exotic experiences. You need to live the experiences you’ve already had. Bring them into your body. Let them change how you stand, how you breathe, how you make choices.

Toward a Culture of Wholeness

When we weave integration into our lives, we stop treating ayahuasca as an escape hatch and start treating it as a teacher. We build lives that match our visions. We stop measuring our spirituality by how many ceremonies we’ve done and start measuring it by how fully we’re living what we’ve learned.

This is the true meaning of integrare: untouched wholeness. It’s not self-improvement. It’s self-recovery. It’s not a mystical hobby. It’s a reconstruction of your nervous system, your relationships, your sense of time and meaning. It’s a new culture living inside an old world.

The Invitation

This podcast exists to give you a handhold on that process. Every episode is designed to meet you at a different point in your integration—pre-ceremony activation, the bridge between identities, community building, embodiment practices. Use these episodes for yourself. Share them with others. Take them into your retreats as a facilitator or a participant.

I am not here as a guru or an expert. I am here as someone who has walked this road, failed at it, found my footing again, and now offers the map I wish I’d had at the beginning. The map is not perfect. The path is yours. But you don’t have to walk it alone.

If you want to know more about the Ayahuasca Integration Alliance or our Integration Coach Training, visit ayahuascaintegration.org. Twice a year we run a full training program for those who want to learn how to guide others through this terrain.

Ayahuasca woke up creative gifts in me I thought were gone—music, writing, a sense of future. It showed me my unborn daughter. It asked me to confront every secret. It broke me open and rebuilt me. And it is still working on me today.

If you’re here reading these words, you’re already on the bridge. Welcome. Take a breath. Feel your feet. The path of integration is the path of coming home to yourself, piece by piece, until nothing is missing.

TRANSCRIPT:

yahuasca Podcast Episode 1

​

 [00:00:00] 

David Vox: Welcome to the Ayahuasca Integration Podcast. If you know what Ayahuasca integration is. It means that you are one of the 0.4% in the entire world who have sat ceremony with ayahuasca. Or maybe you’ve been planning to join the soul family on an adventure, and you’re doing your soulful, sacred due diligence.

So I want you to think about that for a moment. Out of nearly 8 billion people walking on this earth, you are a part of a very small group of human beings that have been called to do this very deep, very sacred work, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

There is something really deep within you that has recognized this call from our grandmother, ayahuasca, and you have answered it, [00:01:00] or you are in the process of doing so when you feel safe enough. I’m really proud for you for being here and for showing up.

For your own inner work and also for having the courage to step into something that most people will probably never understand. And I’m also very honored that I get to spend this time with you.

I want to make sure that. every single moment that I get to share with you can be truly valuable for your integration journey because I know how challenging and confusing this work can be. My name is David Vox I have been on this profound ayahuasca journey now for almost 10 years, and I’m also professional transformational coach, integration coach. And I’ve been supporting leaders for almost 15 years now in the transformational coaching space. Leaders that are doing this deep inner work while simultaneously creating their outer impact in this world.

And I have to say this, there has been nothing more exciting, rewarding, [00:02:00] transformative, and incredible than the journey that I had with Grandmother Ayahuasca and all of the people that I got to meet on this path, the Ayahuasca family. And over the past decade, I witnessed thousands of people step into this work with Ayahuasca.

And I’m also seeing the profound shifts and miracles that happens not just in the ceremony, but in the months and years and even decades that follow. When Ayahuasca knocked on my door, it almost felt like an advent calendar of consciousness that opened up. Every ceremony was like a new window into my soul revealing new layers, new gifts, new understandings, new traumas that I had to release.

So many things that I could never even have imagined before. So this is sacred work. And before we dive into what integration really means, I want to share with you something really important that most people don’t realize, but I’m sure you have already experienced this yourself because integration doesn’t always happen after the [00:03:00] ceremony Because the moment you say yes to working with ayahuasca.

The moment you book that retreat or make that conscious commitment and choice months in advance, your process of transmission can already be activated because the spirit world and your subconscious mind might already begin to steer things up and preparing you for the deep work that is ahead. So you might actually start experiencing things bubbling to the surface with surprising intensity. Weeks, even months before your retreat, it’s like the universe is showing you, Hey, this is where the pain lives. This is where the resistance is hiding, or this is your most toxic relationship pattern. This is where your anger sad assessment stored. Take a look in the mirror and suddenly, relationship might become more challenging, or you might feel an emotional depth or intensity or feeling deeply triggered for reasons that you can’t quite [00:04:00] understand. This is amazing. So if that’s happening for you right now, if we’re in that pre ceremony space and feel things are very intense and chaotic, please know you’re exactly where you need to be.

And it’s a very important part of the integration process. It means the medicine is already working with you and that there is internal capacity inside of you and space to start moving that energy already. this is also your psyche. Beginning to prepare for the profound healing that is coming. sometimes that preparation involves bringing things to the surface so they can be properly addressed in ceremony.

A way that this actually have shown up for me was my last retreat a few weeks ago. An integration coaching client was flying all the way from Phoenix in America to Spain to join me for a retreat with my shamans from Columbia. They were here, but I had gotten sick a few days before he arrived, and I did not wanna go to a [00:05:00] retreat.

And if it wasn’t for this client coming, I would probably not have gone to that retreat at all, which would have, I would’ve missed out on my greatest healing ever because the retreat was outside in a mountains in Spain, in a teepees. It was gonna get cold. And I was so sick. I had so much pain in my throat.

I could not swallow, I could not, I felt like I couldn’t walk and I was just. Staying in bed sleeping, and I’ve had this infection since I was a child. I even had my tonsils removed. But this infection comes back year after year, multiple times a year. So because my client was here, I decided to go to the retreat and just see it as a sign that this is the energy that I need to work on. Very often when we have that, this is energy I have to work on epiphany. It’s usually not the energy you wanna work on at the moment. You just want to feel better. So when the shaman saw me at the mountain, they said, you know what, Ayahuasca ask us our antibiotics from the jungle. So don’t worry. But I wasn’t very hopeful [00:06:00] and I told Ayahuasca when I was drinking the first cup, if you can heal this, I am all in on working with you and creating my platform around my work with you because this is so painful and I don’t even know like how I will stay awake during the ceremony. And just an hour after that first cup was served, I could feel the energy working.

My infection just getting better and better. I could swallow without pain. And during that night I took three cups of ayahuasca and I completely transformed the pain and infection and the fever, and also understood that there were decades of old tears and crying that had been stuck here, and the infection that I was getting.

Since I was a child was just all the crying and the tears that I never got to complete in childhood and over decades and [00:07:00] getting into adulthood and not wanting to cry because of all traumas and not releasing these old emotions. I, on the surface level, gutter and infection over and over again.

Almost like my body trying to say, Hey, there’s some un some underlying elements here that we need to work on. So now I don’t know if I’m ever gonna have that infection again, and I’m really excited next time I get sick to see if I’m going to get it, if it’s going to be as painful as before. Because Ayahuasca really showed me in the last retreat that emotions can be stuck and create infections.

That we keep treating on a surface level, yet sometimes the deceased can be stuck on an energetic level, on a deeper level, and again, what was necessary to work on showed up before the ceremony so that it could be integrated.

The word integration actually comes from Latin, from integrare, and it means whole, complete, or untouched.

So this [00:08:00] is one of my favorite words in the entire world right now, because when we talk about integration in the context of Ayahuasca work, we’re literally talking about the process of becoming whole. Of taking the fragmented parts of ourself that we discovered or healed or transformed in ceremony and weaving them back together into a complete unified being.

deal.

If you feel disintegrated, you might feel like the puzzle piece of you doesn’t really fit into one picture. There are many different pictures than they’re fighting with each other, or you’re hanging in this trap piece, this transformational trap piece. There’s one part of you hanging on this side and another part of you hanging in that side, and you don’t really know what side of you to trust.

So I like to think of integration as the work of bringing our most alive parts back into alignment. Our untouched purity and innocence, our wild, soulful, deeply wise, multifaceted itself that [00:09:00] we always have been. I like to think of it as the process of bringing those untouched, pure, beautiful, essential energy of us, our most authentic energy to the surface, weaving that part of us into every single part of our life. And this is also where the work of integration is a bit different than many other approaches within spirituality and therapy and coaching. Because the intention behind the integration work that I do is that those parts of you are already complete. They’re already, they’re untouched, they’re pure they are your original version, they are already there. This is not a new muscle that you need to find or build. It’s already within you. And our job is to uncover that energy, is to bring that true music and frequency of you to the surface into your life so that the outside and the inside can be resonating on the same energetic level that is [00:10:00] the most.

Purest, truest energy that you can create. So therefore there are less resistance because it’s just naturally coming from you, and therefore you enter this beautiful galactic river where you’re floating with the universe and not against it.

I love to think of integration like this because it reveals that integration isn’t about adding anything. Adding more and learning more strategies , adding something new to who you are, it’s about reclaiming and embodying the wholeness that has always been you and.

Has always been your birthright to be you and probably like me. A lot of what actually made you most alive as a child was something that you got told not to do or not to be, and therefore a lot of your aliveness and your purest, most authentic self is something you compromised early on to fit into whatever cultural family.

Religious system that you had to grow up in, into. So our job is to [00:11:00] bring that back to the surface. So Ayahuasca, she shows us the parts of ourself that we have forgotten, rejected, or lost along the way. And integration is this sacred work of bringing all of those pieces back home to ourself. So not just from a mental standpoint.

Not just through your journal, but spiritually, emotionally, physically, as well as mental integration is literally how do I embody all of the teachings and insights that I was brought into my life and make it real so that it actually is woven into my, the fabric of my, existence. I’ve actually come to realize that integration is like the language of transformation itself. It’s where transformation comes to life. It’s where it becomes real. Because when we go through the transformational process with Ayahuasca, we usually start with deep healing work. We have the crying, the purging, the releasing, the [00:12:00] acceptance of parts of ourself that we might have been running away from years or decades.

We dive into our shadow. We meet our inner child, we connect with ancestors or spirit guides. We receive visions of who we’re meant to become or who we truly are on the inside. All of these different processes happen in the ceremony, and they’re profound and life changing in those moments. But what I’ve learned is that after a hundred plus ceremonies and working with hundreds of people in their integration process, retreat after retreat, eventually after we’d done that initial healing.

we released the trauma and persist the grief and forgiven ourself and others we’re left with a big fundamental question and sometimes a gap between who we were then, with the wound and the pain and trauma and who we are now and who we’re becoming. Who am I without all the pain? Who am I without that story?

How do I walk in this world now that I’m no longer scared of the world [00:13:00] outside or parts of me on the inside? So who are we going to be now when we don’t have a wound that is defining us anymore? Who are we after all this anger is now transformed or the victim story that we rightfully had to carry because we were victims one time.

But Now it no longer defines us, so how are we going to keep writing the narrative of our own story? And that’s when we cross what I call the bridge of integration. It’s this gap between who we were and who we are becoming, and we start actually embodying that person in our day-to-day life. And this bridge can be one of the most challenging parts of the entire journey, and that is why real support is so important.

After a decade of being a facilitator with integration at Ayahuasca retreats, and in my work as a professional transmission coach, I’ve seen most of us move through the same process and cycles when it comes to integration, healing, and transformation.

So I feel like I [00:14:00] know you already, if you’re committed to this path, and I also know so much of the beautiful gifts and rewards and miracles, but also challenges that you are going to experience or already are experiencing. And this podcast will speak to the most important findings and practices that I’ve. Experience for myself when it comes to integration, and I’ll also share from my own integration journey because Ayahuasca has given me some of the toughest integration homework, and I actually refused to do many of them for years until I eventually just met. A corner of my own existence and I couldn’t go any further, and I just decided, okay, there is no other options.

I will just do what she asked me to do. For example, giving away all my luxury belongings and beautiful things that I had and my well-paid job and titles, or going home to Norway for a winter to confront an abusive [00:15:00] foster family that I hadn’t seen since I was five years old. People that I was terrified of as a child and never really wanted to see again.

But where Ayahuasca said it’s important for you to own your story and to show the inner child that you are now this adult person who can share his story in a safe, sacred space. I was also guided by Ayahuasca to confront every single secret that I had inside, which was not fun. Some of these secrets had a lot of power over me.

But she guided me through this homework so that I could be fully free on the inside, and I feel so delicious to not have any secrets and to feel completely free of shame and guilt. She even showed me a partner that I would meet on the romantic journey even before I met him, and She showed me the spirit of my own unborn daughter.

So with all of this magic that experienced with io, I decided to just go all in with this [00:16:00] work. That’s why I’m here with you right now. And even though I can say it’s been extremely challenging from time to time, this journey has been the most magical and miraculous journey of my life. And working with Ayahuasca was like waking up from a trauma trance and finally learning to enjoy my life with every single part of me.

She woke up creative gifts, music.

and heart that was buried under so much grief and anger and sadness that just desperately wanted to breathe and beat and love again. and I’m so eternally grateful for all our support and guidance

Whew. So in the next episode, I am going to share with you some of the fascinating scientific research that has been done the last years, specifically around Ayahuasca integration. There was a huge global study with over 10,000 people where they interviewed. So many different groups all around the [00:17:00] world that drank ayahuasca.

And then from that study they separated a group of 1,630 participants where they asked specifically around integration and ayahuasca integration. So in the next episode you can actually see concrete evidence and experiences that are common theme and a tread most of us face in this work. And this study also show.

The reason why this podcast was born because 53% of the people who participated in this survey said that they struggled after the Ayahuasca ceremony, and many of them said that they did not have the support that they needed to integrate. and I want that to sink in for a moment, especially if you’re one of them.

Right now, more than half of the people who are doing the sacred work are struggling afterwards, feeling isolated, unsupported, and needing help to integrate. There’s a lot of Ayahuasca family that needs our support and when I saw the statistics. I knew that I had to be a part of that solution.

So that’s one of the driving forces behind this [00:18:00] podcast. It’s also why we created Ayahuasca Integration Alliance with different therapists, coaches, shamans, and why I developed also a specialized training for those who want to learn how to become a transformational integration coach, specifically who works with ayahuasca.

 When I read the survey, when I read this survey, I realized that the lack of proper integration and support wasn’t just leaving people confused and disconnected and sometimes even fragmented and disintegrated. It was actually preventing the full healing effect and potential of our beautiful grandmother of the medicine of Ayahuasca from being realized in their lifetimes.

And that’s also why I’m so passionate about all of us having community and guidance, both from indigenous shamans and Eros, but also from us, from the western world who have gone through the integration process ourself and can put into words and can hold a sacred space for others who are going through this process is so important that we all have community.[00:19:00] 

it’s not just helpful, it’s essential And when I started my journey almost 10 years ago, I was so fortunate that the retreat center that I went to wasn’t just offering ayahuasca ceremonies with different indigenous shamans every month. They also incorporated professional psychotherapy sessions in integration circles every single day. They went on for three to five hours so that everyone got to share and be supported.

And witnessed and experienced community and healing and feeling that they’re being held and this center, even though they had lots of challenges that got blown up all over the media. They also trained people to become integration facilitators. So I actually got access to a community of people who were not just doing the medicine work as a one-time healing experience, but who were committed to the long-term transformational process that Ayahuasca facilitates.

And that community became the greatest blessing of my entire journey. I love so many of the people that I met on this path, so shout out to [00:20:00] Brett and Nick and June and Sarah, and Colin and Ariana, and Cesar and Erica, all of you. Looking back now, 10 years later, I realized that the relationships that I formed in that integration training program became more than just friendships.

They became soul family. We went through so many processes together, and it became a root system that kept me grounded and supported.

The people that I got to share this journey, they were yoga teachers and psychologists and medical doctors and traditional shamans from all over the world who went through this journey alongside me, and we became this soul family that held space for each other’s darkest moments and also celebrated each other’s breakthroughs.

Both really beautiful about going into this training journey every single month and. All of these years was that I got to develop a very intimate, ongoing relationship with Ayahuasca herself, and that is what’s important for me on this podcast to bring forward to you, is that relationship that. I have with [00:21:00] Ayahuasca that we can have with Ayahuasca if we show up with a lot of respect and humility and we take the integration process seriously. Even though I also have done like the homework on the teacher’s desk many times, I just feel like the relationship with Ayahuasca that we can create long term is the most important part of this work because it also reflects the sacredness, the humility, and the respect that we are cultivating in a relationship to ourself.

and I was really lucky because I felt like I almost got reparented by Ayahuasca over these years. Some retreats and ceremonies, I would be an emotional 3-year-old. Another weekend I would be a rebellious teenager, and then I would later be a young adult and I would get to meet every single parts of me where there were stuck emotions and traumas and work through them and actually learn to integrate it at all of these different stages and state of being.

So as we move forward together to this podcast. YouTube series. I want you to know [00:22:00] that every episode is specially designed with your integration process in mind and also for you to have something to support others with when they are integrating. So when you go to your next retreat as a facilitator or as an integration coach or participant, you have tools to use for yourself, but also to share with others. And I’m here to support you in the process, not as someone who has all the answers, because God knows after 10 years in this path, I know nothing. But as someone who has walked this path and witnessed the profound restoration of miracles, that’s possible. But integration is done with intention, respect, and humility, but also community and proper guidance.

Together we’re going to explore how to turn your IAS experience into a lived reality for healing, purpose, and service that extends far beyond the ceremonial space and into every aspect of your beautiful expanding life. Welcome my friend to your integration journey and to the process. I’m honored beyond the words to walk this path with [00:23:00] you.

My name is David Vox, and if you want to find out more information about the Ayahuasca Integration Alliance,

visit ayahuascaintegration.org. You will also find there more information about our Ayahuasca Integration Coach training that starts twice a year.

Have a beautiful week, my friend, and see you next time