In this episode, I share the full story of my very first Ayahuasca ceremony — not just the visions or the purge, but the deeper work of integration and the power of conducting this journey together with others.
From the first sip of the medicine, everything I had tried to control or silence began to surface. Rage I had denied for years came out as fire, tears that had been buried since childhood finally poured out, and the voice of my inner child — the part of me that believed I was completely alone — finally found a way back into my heart. Integration began the moment I allowed myself to be witnessed, the moment I stopped carrying it all in silence.
What changed everything was the sweat lodge. In total darkness, with nothing but the glowing ancestor stones and the sound of everyone’s breath, we were asked to share our earliest and darkest memories. I had never spoken some of my truths to anyone, but in that sacred container I could. One by one, people released the secrets and traumas they had carried for years. And as each story was spoken, the whole group shifted — crying together, breathing together, transforming the energy as one body.
That is what integration truly is. It isn’t only what happens inside the ceremony. It is the circle, the lodge, the courage to speak what has been hidden, and the collective willingness to hold each other’s pain without judgment. Integration is not about returning to “normal life” as if nothing happened. It is about weaving the experience back into who we are, together.
By the time I returned from that first retreat, the world itself felt different. Where I once saw only anger in people’s eyes, I now saw love. The rage inside me had shifted, and the frequency of the world around me shifted with it. That change did not happen because I drank Ayahuasca alone, but because I integrated with others — in the sweat lodge, in the circle, in the raw truth of conducting healing together.
This episode is not a polished story of bliss. It is a lived account of how integration works when it is real: messy, painful, collective, and sacred. If you have ever wondered what Ayahuasca integration truly looks like in practice, this story will take you there.
Transcript:
What happens when you meet the most scared, lonely, or angry part of yourself?
The part you have been trying to numb down or shut up?
The slowest-moving part inside of you, that you have tried to outrun your entire life, yet it keeps sitting in your suitcase no matter where you go.
Is it like letting all the demons loose, with total chaos? Or is it a rebirth? where you finally start dancing with your destiny?
The fear of answering this question made me avoid trying Ayahuasca for many years, thinking it would be like opening the door to the closet I had locked away all monsters, the part of my shadow I had kept in control with eating disorders, nicotine addiction, and trying to manage my depression and anxiety by overworking and manically controlling myself with an abusive, sarcastic inner voice.
And even though I was deeply asleep, I knew I was yearning for something different.
And it’s thanks to this deeper desire I joined what I believe are the blessed ones that get to do this deeper work.
Us who are so privileged that we have time and money and space to prioritize our own healing and transformation, and courage and inner wisdom to surrender, enter a path sometimes miles away from the path our lineage had traveled before us.
And in this episode, I’m going to take you on a journey through my first Ayahuasca experience as I stepped on this path myself.
We’ll explore the deep, sometimes painful process of confronting the parts of ourselves we’ve kept hidden, and the profound healing that can come from it.
So, feel free to get comfortable and join me as we dive into the depths of the soul, where miracles and magic await wrapped into the ever-expanding mystery box called “transformation”.
Disclaimer: Every episode of this podcast contains deep spiritual and human experiences, including shares about trauma and transformation.
I’m sitting here right now, humbled to the floor, after returning from an incredible Ayahuasca experience with my shamans, William and Sandra. It’s been almost ten years now with their family, their music, and their ancient knowledge about Ayahuasca from Putumayo in Colombia.
The funny thing is, I’m recording this episode about my very first Ayahuasca ceremony, after over 100 ceremonies over these 10 years, training to become an Ayahuasca facilitator.
And this last one? Beyond the most life-changing and different so far. It’s what amazed me with Ayahuasca, 100 _ ceremonies, and I’ve never had a similar experience. It’s why we call this a medicine, not a drug, because with Ayahuasca, you don’t get high, or you don’t get drunk as you would with other substances, you get exactly what you need for your deepest healing and transformation.
And this ceremony made something out of a healing fairytale.
It was like every single memory, every trauma, every single lesson learned through Ayahuasca—all those scattered ideas of myself and spirit—suddenly all fit together.
And it had to happen just days before recording this first episode about Ayahuasca. Almost like the grandmother herself was showing me what I also want to share with you in this podcast.
What transformation truly is.
Because transformation is a bit like believing in Santa Claus. Once you know Santa doesn’t exist, you can’t go back to believing he does. That part of you is then gone. The same is true for transformation. It’s an expansion in consciousness where the old thought, pattern, or belief doesn’t fit in your life anymore. You can’t go back and pretend it is the way it was. It’s over.
So let me take you back to my first encounter with Ayahuasca and a plant medicine worker named Darwin. This incredible musician, I called him “the shit guru” because he never stopped talking about the shit we all carry, and how, when released, it becomes the soil that flowers can grow in.
I am so incredibly grateful for this healing journey. It’s the greatest treasure I’ve ever had. The people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve had, and how my life has changed inside out, day by day, since I finally started to surrender.
And honestly, if it wasn’t for that first plant medicine ceremony and this journey, I have a feeling I could have wasted my entire life just sleepwalking through it all.
That’s why I’m so excited to finally share this story with you.
Not from the perspective of that broken, sad, and anxious person I was that believed I was so broken I was not able to heal, but from this place of immense gratitude.
I feel like the luckiest person in the universe, and I can’t wait to take you all on this incredible healing journey with Ayahuasca and other plant teachers.
10 years ago today, I was living in Barcelona working as a business coach.
I had a few high-profile clients. And. they all had extraordinary success.
I had been interviewed on some bigger platforms like Forbes and Amy Porterfield.
I had bought everything I ever wanted to own.
I looked good compared to what the outside gay requirements were—body fat and muscles on point.
But inside, I felt like I was holding on for my dear life to not let any of my inner fears ruin my life.
As if my life was this advent calendar of consciousness, with 24 windows, and I hadn’t opened any of them because I was scared to look at what was on the inside. It was just easier to look for the gifts on the outside. Where others could see it as well.
So I just kept making up shit, making it look good on the outside.
I was constantly working. Never dating. Never out. I felt anxiety if I walked more than 30 minutes from my home because I should be home working and being productive. And at night I overate. Ice cream. Pizza. You know the drill.
Then I received a WhatsApp message from my friend Brett in Madrid about joining an Ayahuasca ceremony.
Brett, a 6.4 feet gorgeous American gay guy living in Madrid as a Spanish teacher, that I had a secret crush on, wanted me to come and try this out with him.
We had talked about it. And after the podcast episode from Tim Ferriss’ show, we all wanted to try it out. It was like with that one podcast, it was publicly approved by a smart guy to test this out. (Thanks Tim!)
But the reason why I wanted to try Ayahuasca was a very surprising YouTube video. And I did not understand WHY it had such a deep, profound impact on me that left a mark, as if it had somehow touched my soul.
It was a YouTube video where someone explained their experience with Ayahuasca, and it was this beautiful girl, maybe 25 years old, that had taken the medicine in the jungle. After drinking the medicine, she walked outside in nature and touched a tree with her tiny hand..
And as she was explaining her experience with touching this tree, I could just feel my heart opening, as if there was an ear inside my heart that just wanted to lean out and listen, just to feel the depth of every single word that she was expressing.
She said that the moment she touched the tree, she could feel the love from the entire Mother Earth just pouring through her hand, through the trunk and the roots of this tree, she could feel the Mother, our Mother Earth, and how much she loved her.
She could feel that Earth was her Creator. And this deeply touched me, because I knew I had that connection with Mother Earth as a child, nature was my sanctuary growing up. It was the place where no one could abuse me, no one could bully me for being gay or different, and it was the sacred place where I could play with my goats, knowing that no one would hurt me, no one would want to shame me. It was ground zero.
It was this place where my soul could just roam free in between the trees and the grass and the wind.
It was this place where I could just sit down and sing and feel like the happiest little being in the world.
And that place had just gone smaller and smaller and smaller the more I grew up trying to fit in, in the artificial world.
Seeing this YouTube video of this woman talking about Ayahuasca, I just felt… I just want to take this medicine so I can just feel that love again from Mother Earth.
I wanted to feel that connection more than anything else… But I had no clue what Ayahuasca really was, and I didn’t want to know more, because that experience she shared just told my soul exactly what it needed to hear.
And if you don’t know what Ayahuasca is, it’s a tea that has been served for thousands of years in different areas of the Amazon. You find it in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, and Costa Rica. There are many different shamanic groups that utilize this medicine. For example, in Colombia, we worked with shamans from Putumayo. This medicine was, first and foremost, the medicine that the shaman in the village would drink, and then the medicine would tell him or her how to heal or help the person they were there to serve.
In ceremonies, we usually have a shaman or a medicine worker, or a taita as we sometimes call them, who gives us this cup of medicine. Ayahuasca, which is a spirit we call the grandmother, comes into our body and guides us on how we can heal ourselves, how we can become our own shaman, how we can become our own healer, and find our own voice and power. It is truly the most magical journey of a lifetime.
I feel this first retreat that I had with Ayahuasca in Madrid was when my life finally woke up, and my life finally began. Before, I was just an automated player in a Mario Kart game, constantly driving into the same trauma banana peel, spinning around in my own life, completely dizzy and wanting to vomit because I was constantly repeating the same cycles of suffering, addiction, and pain.
Ayahuasca is this magical medicine that actually helps us dive into our subconscious. It’s similar to brainwaves in a dream state, but you’re awake while you’re dreaming, almost like a lucid dream. When you close your eyes after drinking Ayahuasca, you get to meet your subconscious and have someone guiding you through it, Ayahuasca is sort of our co-pilot. This medicine has been used for thousands of years as a way to come back into the heart. It’s called the wine of the soul because it truly guides you to your soul. To truth.
It’s a tiny cup of unconditional love, bringing the light to the densest, darkest part of us, because it knows that our true potential, our deepest healing and expansion, lies in making the unconscious, the darkest part of us, conscious and aware.
_
I didn’t know any of that when I was getting on the train for my first Ayahuasca ceremony…. I didn’t want to read anything about it. I had one tree experience I wanted to feel. I didn’t know WHY this was so important for me, and why THIS ONE experience with nature spoke to my soul so deeply.
I was traveling from Barcelona with my new friend, Nick from Ukraine, who I had met while renting an Airbnb in Barcelona.
He was really mesmerized by that and curious about the transformative coaching journey. So, as new friends, we went on the train together to Madrid to meet Brett, who had invited us to come.
There is something really special about doing something you’re completely terrified of, especially when you don’t know the outcome and you’re doing it with friends.
It’s almost like going on a quest together, knowing that you won’t be the same person when you come back.
Even before entering the Ayahuasca ceremony, I felt like my ego was going through a tiny death process. It was terrified because it didn’t know what was going to happen—we were taking the train into the unknown.
We met up with Brett in the bustling streets of Madrid and had lunch at a colorful tapas restaurant, sitting outside under some large oak trees.
Speaking about our fear of what could happen, we decided to write a letter to our families, a goodbye letter in case some of us didn’t make it through.
Because we had no idea what COULD happen.
It must be the only lunch I’ve ever had that was so quiet, with everyone writing goodbye letters to their families because we honestly didn’t know how we would react to the medicine or what could happen. We all came into it with the worst-case scenarios in mind, which I think is very typical for egos new to the journey of surrendering.
I told my friends, Nick and Brett, if something happens to me, please send this to my sister’s husband and let them know I am really thankful I got to have a family in this lifetime that I love.
I was so scared sitting there with Brett and Nick, because I had not been honest with them at all. I hadn’t told them anything about how traumatizing my early life had been or about the demons I was hiding inside.
I wanted my gay friends to think I was this handsome, successful, and perfect business coach, with the muscles, the smile, and everything going for me.
Even though I was that on some level, I didn’t want them to see that inside of me, and I also felt I might also not even remember all the bad stuff that had happened to me, and how I would react to meeting it if I had to.
I was scared it would be a Pandora’s box that would unleash all my demons, and I would go psychotic or worse, go crazy…
But I was also tired—tired of the nightmares, tired of waking up feeling like someone was strangling me, the constant anxiety that I could only cure with cigarettes or nicotine,
I was tired of waking up exhausted from running for my life in my dreams.
I was tired of overworking and overeating and overthinking to distract myself from how I was feeling inside.
I was just tired of being tired.
So, there was a risk with Ayahuasca, but I felt being in the same miserable state was an even greater risk. In my early 30s, with a seemingly successful career, my heart felt like it was clinging to survival.
When we got on the bus in Madrid to go to the retreat center, we were still really quiet, looking out the windows, seeing the bustling streets of Madrid turning into a spring-green, flat, farm landscape.
And at the bus I had a silent prayer in my heart, asking, “God, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but please help me heal. Please don’t let this abuse mean I can never have a fully happy, peaceful life. Please, let this be a way for me to fully heal.”
When we got closer to the retreat, a beautiful red house far out in the countryside, I told Nick and Brett, “If there are crazy hippies in there, we’re leaving immediately.”
We walked over to a large, fenced property and, with all our judgments and fears, we knocked on a large wooden door.
The people who opened it had the same fear in their eyes as us—also participants coming for the first time, but filled with love, courage, and wonder.
Together, we all sat down around the pool, laughing about how crazy and silly it was to be far out in nowhere, drinking a medicine we didn’t understand what it was.
That’s where we met our shaman, Cesar from Colombia, a green-eyed, Greek-god-looking Latino, and Darwin, who I like to call the “shit-guru.” A long-haired singer who always smiled and would never walk anywhere without his guitar, in case he felt like playing a song.
Their simple instruction was to surrender to whatever would happen.
The only thing my mind did not want to hear.
As we entered the first ceremony, we went into a large farm-like building that could host all 30 participants that had come together, mostly foreigners traveling to be here from all over Europe.
They gave everyone a small cup of some chocolate-tasting Ayahuasca, and then we sat down on mats and meditated and listened to music with our eyes closed. It was quiet outside. But not on the inside.
I was shocked to experience the entire night feeling like the medicine was scanning my body—every cell, every organ, every memory.
It felt like a scanner traveling through my entire being, trying to see where to start the work. I didn’t meet Ayahuasca that night, but I did meet some terrifying emotions within myself.
I kept going to the toilet, releasing so much with such brutal intensity,
feeling like I had a thousand warriors screaming inside me. Like every cell of my being was screaming with rage.
The only way I could express their screams was to release it from the, my poor anus, with such force that I had to look into the toilet bowl afterward to make sure I hadn’t accidentally pooped my own soul out into the toilet.
For the entire group, this night was just calm. Except me, who was 1 second away from screaming like a crazy person, and since I couldn’t do that, kept running to the bathroom 30-40 times, to repeat my release from the south end.
After the ceremony, I needed answers. Because I was NOT an angry person! I was a very happy, smiling person. So why is the medicine making me feel like I am losing my shit with anger?
I told the shit guru Darwin, “I didn’t have a good night with the medicine. I felt like screaming with rage the whole time, and I am not an angry person, and I didn’t want to scream and scare anyone.”
Darwin replied, “Healing can sometimes be very dramatic. If you feel like screaming, scream and release the energy.”
I went to bed that night, not understanding much, just hoping the next night wouldn’t be as intense.
And I could not have been more wrong.
When the second night came, I was more open. I had felt something moving in my body and felt that the medicine was working with me, not against me.
I also felt I had the permission to scream, though I wasn’t sure if I dared to do that in a room with my two of my friends and 30 other participants.
What would my friends think if I suddenly started screaming as a lunatic?
When I took the cup the second night, something so magical happened to me, something that I find more interesting than any religion, any technology, anything that can literally happen in the physical realm.
In just a fraction of a second, this jungle woman, this abuela, grandmother as we call her—Ayahuasca herself—was standing in front of me in a crystal-clear vision, with the most beautiful colors I had ever seen.
Her eyes looked straight at me. She looked like a woman merged with a beautiful bird, and I knew instantly that this was not a hallucination. I could feel her presence, and she was real.
As a white person from Norway who had never seen a spirit before, it was quite a shock to actually see that. I always believed that the spirit realm was real, but to see it, to meet it, is very different.
Like, wow, she’s here, right in front of me or in me. A spirit.
I was just stunned and in awe, looking at her.
That’s when she asked me, “Are you ready to let go now?”
I didn’t expect that question at all and didn’t even know what it meant. I don’t have anything to let go of?
I looked at her because I didn’t really understand the question.
And I was still scared, so I asked her, “Is this going to hurt?”
She replied with a smile and nodded,
“Yes, this is going to hurt.”
So I just said, “Let’s do this.” And I leaned backward, crying, and surrendered as completely and fully as a soul can surrender.
It felt like waves of fire inside me, like being inside a washing machine filled with flames, rolling around and breathing, spitting fire out of my mouth. So much rage.
Eventually, I had to turn around and scream the loudest, angriest scream I had ever screamed in my entire life into the pillow.
But the pillow didn’t help.
I knew in an instant that everyone in the room could hear me.
It was like a lion’s roar, the angriest, most powerful roar and energy I had ever felt moving through me.
In the second that I screamed, pure rage moved through my body, and it felt like my entire energy field just bounced back.
My energy field had been this beautiful orb around me when I was born, and then all the abuse, all the people hitting me and touching me inappropriately, invading my body and my life force, making me scared of saying anything, making me scared of crying, making me scared of screaming, making me scared of saying even a word—my energy field had just grown smaller and smaller until it almost felt like it was a plastic shell stuck to my body, trying to be invisible, trying to be as small as possible, trying not to take up any space, not owning my own energy, not owning my own body, not owning my own rage.
When I screamed, when the lion moved through me, it was like I screamed to the entire world,
“This is my body.
This is my space.”
My energy field is sacred.
All of you, stay away.
Nobody touches me without permission,
and no one gets too close to me right now.”
You could probably feel an energy in my voice that my energy field did not collapse after that. I felt, for the first time, that my spirit could move again, that I had taken back the space of actually being allowed to be alive, to have my own little world, even if it was just a square meter. Just my own little space in this entire universe where I was allowed to be me. And to FEEL.
If I ever showed rage as a child, I would have been brutally punished, so I only showed the happy, nice emotions, even when abused. So,
My energy field had collapsed. It has been leaking fear, leaking energy into the past, leaking energy into anxiety.
And now that energy had bounced back with just one scream into the pillow. I was amazed. I knew at that moment my life would never be the same, and that this form of therapy or healing was deeper than I could even comprehend.
But to feel it actually work in an instant was beyond.
And then underneath all the rage came sadness, a grief so deep, sadness so profoundly deep that it felt like oceans of tears had been trapped inside my lungs, and I was drowning.
Because I never released it. When I started crying, it felt like I was two years old, all alone in a world where no one could see me, no one wanted to hold me, hug me, or be with me. I remembered how it felt to be two years old. I remembered how I was thinking, how I was feeling, and how I made sense of it all—that nobody wanted to touch me, play with me, or be with me because there was something wrong with me, because I was not worthy, because I was not what anyone wanted.
I could feel how these deep beliefs created a resonance, a meaning at that time, to make sense of my reality.
But how it was still playing out in my life now, like a chord played on a piano just low enough that I couldn’t hear it, but still creating this background music, this carpet behind the play that always gave a certain energy of me never feeling enough.
. I understood, there and then, that maybe we all do the same thing, that there is a pain inside all of us, an inner child inside all of us, that believes they are completely alone, that believes no one will ever see or understand them, that believes they are the only one with that pain, the only one with that story, the only one carrying that pain.
As I was looking around, I understood that so much of the pain we carry is simply because we all believe we are alone.
We all believe we cannot share, or that we are separated from everyone else’s pain around us.
And as I was sitting there, crying so deeply as only a two-year-old could cry, remembering how I cried as a baby—
Howling like a little wolf. It was so magical and so difficult to meet this old sad pain lying all the way at the back of my subconscious. But it also felt so natural. It felt like having eaten a huge dinner and holding it in for 30 years, finally releasing it. It felt like oceans of tears finally pouring out through my lungs, pouring out through my being. And then I said to Ayahuasca, after crying for hours, “I need a break.”
And suddenly Ayahuasca just turned off the process, and I could get on my legs and walk out. And I felt completely normal again for a moment.
I understood that we can actually have a dialogue because we were working together.
This medicine is so magical.
So, I walked outside, looking at the stars. They were shining brightly and with an intensity you can only find when you travel far away from the city center into nature.. I’d never seen stars like that. I had to ask someone next to me, “Were they always there?” And I was sad that I couldn’t even remember the last time I just stood there in awe, looking at the stars.
The stars looked like a heavenly disco of blinking, living entities above me, like ancestors that you could feel connecting from the distant. I had never felt so deeply connected to the cosmos before..
I laid down into the grass, which was wet from the night’s humidity, and in the dark night, I was just crying so deeply.
One of the facilitators, Pablo, came to me and said, “David, what is going on? Why are you crying?”
I said, “I’m crying because I have no friends, no one loves me, and I’m all alone in the world.”
He said, “But David, you came here with two friends, and they love you a lot.”
I understood, in that moment, that there was a version of me living inside that had never met the future, that had never met this moment, that was completely separate.
Right there, at that moment in the grass, I was living through and being that version of me—a version that was only a few years old, that honestly believed they were all alone and nobody loved them.
With the consciousness of also being a 30-year-old person with friends and family, I could feel almost like the neuroplasticity in my brain started making little connections between the part of me that felt completely separate and the part of me that is here now, living this rich life, with friendships, with family. I understood then, that the part of me a few years old thought that being alone, unloved, and not cared for was something they thought would be forever. That part of me never knew that it would change. That we would grow up. They thought that those moments would last forever.
More importantly, I could feel the spiritual expansion of this part of me that had been separated and fragmented, this inner child version of me that could finally come back to my heart, that could melt and be embraced by who I was now, that could finally look through my eyes and see, “We do have some friends, and we do have a good life. We’re safe now. We made it.
You’re okay. You made it, and you have friends.”
Pablo was standing there next to me, holding my hand as I was crying and trying to convince me, “David, you have friends. You’re not all alone,” while I was trying to almost defend the reality I was living. “No, I don’t have friends. Nobody loves me. I am all alone in the entire universe.”
It made so much sense to me, also from the conscious level I was in, that this is probably what I’ve been doing my entire life—the parts of me that are completely separate believe the reality and beliefs they have cultivated and will speak through my entire organism, trying to make it real on the outside, trying to create the emotions or the reality so it proves to itself that, “Yes, this is real. I told you, nobody loves me. No one cares about me. I’m not enough.”
This gave me probably 10 years of therapy in just two nights, seeing and meeting and being the version of me that felt unloved, the version of me that felt separated from the whole universe, not only from myself but the whole universe.
Lying there in the grass underneath the stars, feeling that version of me coming back, merging, becoming a part of me again, felt so magical.
Still, I could feel there were more oceans to cry because I had lost my best friend as a child, and the pain of that felt like a deep, stabbing pain into my heart, and I couldn’t even go there.
So I said to Ayahuasca, “I can’t do anymore now.”
I walked back to my mat and could see Brett sitting there completely disturbed. He had not felt anything from the medicine and had just been watching people “going crazy” all night.
I only had one question for him…
“Did you hear me scream?”
“How could I not,” he said and smiled..
One of the women had been crawling on her hands through the entire ceremony room shouting “I HAVE THE ANSWER I HAVE THE ANSWER I HAVE THE ANSWER,” which had made me so curious to know what this answer was, since it seemed really profound…
So I asked her outside while she was having a cigarette under the stars,
What was the answer?
She looked at me, puffed her cigarette, and replied>
Love,
That’s all I got.
The following day, everyone was sitting in an integration circle on the floor, sharing their stories and experiences from the first night.
When it came to my turn, my entire body was shaking. Uncontrollably, my legs were vibrating as if they were having a panic attack by themselves.
I had only shared my story a few times before outside my last lovely foster family and a therapist’s office, and it always ended really badly.
At high school, I shared about my childhood with someone I thought was a friend, and they had called me a liar, and told everyone about how I lied about my childhood, and even made songs about me in front of the entire school, making fun of me and my childhood.
Because in their little privileged life, they could not comprehend some of the abuse I had survived.
And with some gay friends later in life, they had taken my story and used it against me, making fun of me in front of everyone at a party.
My most sensitive, saddest part had been made fun of, shamed, ridiculed, so I was so scared of sharing anything again.
But as they say, shame dies when our stories are shared in safe circles. I started sharing, shaking, crying, and looking at Nik on my left side, and Brett on my right side..
Thinking, Here goes my persona as Mr perfect …
I shared that I had grown up with goats.. In 3 families.. And with a mom in prison for murder.. And that I had an amazing family now, that I loved, and a great life, but still struggled with sometimes not wanting to live anymore.
I was so ashamed of saying that.
I cried and cried. I struggled finding my voice.,
And afterwards, I looked into the eyes of everyone there.. No one judged me.
No one was making fun of me.
No one was punishing me.
Everyone was just holding this space for me to share. And that was all I needed right then, no empathy or compassion or validation, I just needed to be able to share my own experience.
The shit guru played music and talked about how important it was to release the shit we have inside.
When we don’t, it creates disease.
When we do release it, it becomes the nutrient soil that flowers can grow in.
This became such a beautiful visual for me. I thought, “Well, if you have a lot of shit, like I released last night, how many flowers do you get?”
Just from yesterday’s poop safari, I should have a garden ready to blossom…
And this made me so happy, because maybe what I had wasn’t just a broken childhood… what I had was just lots of nutrients to grow a lot of flowers.
Somehow transformation now gave me a very positive and different outlook on life, where I could turn this inner turmoil into a garden of flowers in different colors, with butterflies flying everywhere.
The integration didn’t stop just in a circle where we were sharing. We were invited to do a sweat lodge, and learned the hard way that day, a sweat lodge is not just low-budget sauna.
A sweat lodge is a sacred, transformative experience, much like a deep, spiritual cleanse for the body, mind, and soul.
It unites us with the elements of air, fire, earth, wind, and with humility.
Picture a small, dome-shaped structure of wood, covered in blankets to make it incredibly warm and dark inside.
It’s a place where you sit with others, often naked, embracing vulnerability and surrendering to the intense heat.
Inside, hot stones are carried from a fire outside—known as Ancestor Stones—they are placed in the center, and water is poured over them to create steam.
The air becomes thick, the heat almost unbearable, but it’s in this environment that true healing begins. You share your deepest stories, your traumas, and your fears, each word melting into the steam, purging the body and spirit of its burdens.
The sweat lodge connects you to the earth, to your ancestors, and to the deepest parts of yourself.
It’s a journey back to the womb, a reconnection with the sacred, a powerful ritual that leaves you feeling reborn, grounded, and profoundly connected to your true self.
So the entire group came together in this sweat lodge.
No one could see me, and I couldn’t even see myself.
Then they carried in what they called the Ancestor Stones. We greeted it with a song, and sang welcome dear ancestor… And for each stone, we had to share something that had happened to us, first between the age of zero to seven.
I was so shocked hearing the vulnerable truths that everyone had to share, now they felt safe in the blanket of pitch-black darkness.
A blue-eyed English man had been abused by his grandmother.
Another had been raised in a pedophile ring that made him believe he didn’t own his own body, his own voice, and was abandoned when he was 13.
He was so quiet and barely spoke a word, but hearing him share his truth felt deeply touching, as if each word had been traveling from the deepest place in his heart, finally safe enough to come outside. It felt like seeing butterflies of light that had been waiting to come out and fly.
Then there were people who hadn’t had traumatic childhoods, and they were crying in the sweat lodge because they felt bad for those of us who had.
And when my time came, I could feel my entire body shaking again with fear and anxiety,
Because what I was going to share had never been shared with anyone, ever.
It was something that I was deeply ashamed of. And also, did not understand at all.
When I lived at a goat farm with my second foster family, I was 2-5 years old
And around 5 years old, I was once asked by my foster parents—a woman with very white skin, large black hair, and very angry eyes, and a man who was two meters tall, about six point 5 feet tall—if I wanted to help bring the goats to the mountain.
I remember it was a strange request in the early morning, so close to Christmas.
Goats, they don’t go to the mountain for Christmas.
I must have been around five years old, but I was so proud because my foster dad and I were going to do something together.
As we walked, I thought it was strange we didn’t bring any food with us if we were going to walk all the way up to the mountain.
We started walking up the cliff that takes us to the mountain, a steep cliff with rocks straight down into the ocean.
We climbed higher and higher on the little trail, overlooking the ocean and the fjords, with the sun slowly rising on the horizon.
When we got to the top of the cliff, where it is the tallest and just rocks going straight down into the ocean, my foster dad asked me to stop and look out towards the sunrise.
I remember standing there, just looking towards the sunshine.
He stood behind me and put his hands on my shoulders.
I felt so immensely proud. Prouder than I had ever felt. I
t was the first time I felt my dad loved me. Showed me affection.
And then I felt a strong push on my shoulders, a push so hard that I flew headfirst down the hill, down the cliff, hitting the rocks without feeling any pain.
I had no control over my body, experiencing a peaceful, strange sensation—hearing no thoughts, almost like knowing it was over without really understanding it.
I always thought of small animals that get attacked by a predator, how they suddenly stop kicking their feet because part of them knows it’s over.
There’s no need to use more energy. It’s as if our subconscious landscape pulls the plug when we’re done. That’s how it felt, falling down this cliff, falling into the ocean, knowing I couldn’t swim, falling so fast I couldn’t do anything.
And then I experienced a miracle, a real miracle.
Just before falling into the ocean and drowning,
I felt a lightning bolt strike from within my heart, moving with all its energy, burning through my right arm and out into my fingers in my tiny right hand.
Suddenly, I had grabbed a tree one or two meters before falling into the ocean. Without even trying to do anything.
I had no conscious impact on this.
There was something else that entered my body, like lightning with enormous electricity and power, moving through my arm and grabbing a tree small enough to fit my hand but strong enough not to get ripped up so we both fell into the ocean.
The only tree that was there.
I remember almost awakening in that moment, looking at the tree and my hand holding it, thinking that this tree had grown there, just at the edge of this cliff, because it knew one day I would fall and I would need to grab it.
It had grown perfectly small enough for my hand to fit it, and strong enough to save me.
After that, I had such a special connection to this tree because I just knew in my heart that it saved me.
I didn’t understand this lightning energy coming from my heart. I just knew in that moment that something else exists, that’s all I had.
Something else exists that is not me, that can’t be seen.
I looked up at my stepdad, who was standing at the top of the cliff. I thought he would smile and laugh, thinking this was some kind of challenge or game he had given me, and I had made it.
But his eyes had turned black with rage, and he walked away.
I shared this story in the dark sweat lodge,
Going from feeling separated alone the night before, now somehow feeling more connected to humans than ever before. As if these stories hidden in the darkness are the thread that could weave me back into connection with everyone else, because it was weaving myself into wholeness.
The sweat lodge had turned itself into this healing organism, and we were all these different organs in this healing body, working to transform and transmute the trauma we had within us.
As I shared something deeply, deeply painful, you could hear the breath of the entire sweat lodge, breathing in, breathing out.
Everyone was breathing together to transform the energy that was coming through.
Together, all you could see were the glowing warm ancestor stones in the center, and all you could hear was the breath of everyone sitting together, tight in a circle, listening to someone share.
Each time someone shared something difficult or traumatic, you could hear how the breath of the entire group changed.
We all started breathing deeper, transforming the energy, and putting it into the fire, offering it back to our ancestors.
I was so touched that someone else was crying because they were in pain from hearing about my pain.
It was like the healing mirror was turned from so many angles—those experiencing similar pain, deeper pain, and those feeling our pain and the pain of others. It was turned around like a clock so we could feel the healing frequency from so many different angles.
The pain I thought I was the only one who had—just seeing and hearing from other brothers and sisters that they also had really difficult similar journeys—showed me that we were not alone… we were all healing.
We were taking back our power, the gift of our life, our hearts, our bodies, and our journeys.
We were not going to let any of this define us, and now we had a circle to support each other as we moved on this path to release all of it and transform it all.
This sweat lodge became such a symbol for me of the power of healing and the transformational impact that can happen when we dare to open up to our own inner darkness, to just be naked and let our stories be heard and witnessed in a safe space.
My third mom, who I call my real mom, would tell me as a child, “David, when you share your stories, when you share your fear, it’s like you’re putting the trolls out there into the sun, and they can only explode because they can’t take the light.” That’s how it felt, sitting in a sweat lodge or sitting with the medicine.
The medicine would go exactly where that darkness was, exactly where the troll was, exactly where the lie was, and bring it back into the light so it could be transformed.
As the sweat lodge got hotter and hotter, I became more and more claustrophobic also, constantly battling the mind that wanted to crawl out.
Eventually, I gave up. At the last ancestor stone, from ages 14-21, I crawled out.
The wet, cold grass stroked my naked body as I pushed myself out from what felt like a cocoon, and I could feel the fresh, cool air again, almost as if it was the first time.
I was filled with gratitude. Because that part of me that had felt so alone was finally feeling seen, heard, and understood.
And the most magical thing after this first Ayahuasca retreat and ceremony didn’t actually happen during the retreat. Or the sweat lodge.
It happened afterward.
When I came back to Barcelona, I got into a taxi, expecting the driver to be rude and start screaming at me so I could scream back. I looked into their eyes, expecting to see the same angry, empty stare.
But something had changed, as if someone had changed the frequency or the radio channel on the entire planet.
Normally, I would always find the angry, upset person anywhere, any time, probably because I had so much anger inside of me that just wanted to scream.
It was like I attracted and bonded with everyone else who wanted to scream.
After this first retreat, it was like they were all gone.
When I looked into people’s eyes, where I used to always see their inner rage, fear, or anger waiting to crawl out, now I saw so much love, so much purity, so much joy.
I remember being completely mesmerized by this, walking down the street just in awe, and looking at everyone’s eyes.
Where are the angry ones?
Where did they go?
I began to understand that maybe if I released this anger inside of me, it also got released on the outside.
Maybe I changed the energy, the radio channel of my own anger FM, my own rage version of reality, and I couldn’t meet those filled with rage anymore because we were just not in the same frequency.
That was the biggest breakthrough for me on the first journey.
Even though I didn’t have a positive Ayahuasca experience—it felt like being in hell for a few days—I just knew it was working.
I felt how the whole universe, not just internally but externally, had changed.
I also felt so much gratitude because we weren’t just these little demon monkeys running around on Earth, traumatizing each other.
There was this whole universe of spirits and magic and music ready to assist us if we were just able to surrender, able to trust our heart and these spirits that were here to guide us.
So, that’s when I decided I would come back to Ayahuasca. I would work more. I would go deeper because I felt, for the first time, after working with so many famous coaches and therapists all over the world, that I had found a path to heal myself completely, and I would not stop. This was now my journey.
So my friends, that was my first Ayahuasca journey.
Even though I thought after this first ceremony that I would never do coaching again because I felt Ayahuasca could bring 10 years of therapy in three days.
As a coach, I just felt like I was nothing compared to this. But I’m still working as a coach today, because there is a medicine that awakens in each and every one of us when we do this deeper healing work.
And coaching can also be a great tool to transform and expand, and integrate our transformation.
We are all, as I said, different organs of the healing body.
The cool thing is this..
Almost everyone I connected with at that first ceremony now works in this industry.
As sex therapists. Healers. Coaches. Massage therapists. And the young gay man who was raised in a pedophile circle and didn’t know how to express his voice?
He now sings on stages around the world. He found his voice.
It’s one thing to meet someone and see them while they are healing, it’s something else to see how much they blossom over the year once that shit is released.
I hope, wherever you are right now, that you also find your path to heal, to expand, and to explore the magic, beauty, and light that you came into this world with.
It is uniquely yours. Sending you lots of love.
Shine bright, souls friends and see you next week!
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