Integration After Ayahuasca: When Your Life No Longer Fits You

Do you ever look around your life and feel like you’ve outgrown the whole thing?

That’s the territory this episode lives in.

The stretch between who you were before ayahuasca and who you can no longer pretend to be after.
Where ceremony cracked you open, your consciousness expanded, but your relationships, work, and daily structures are still built for an older version of you.

In this episode we go straight into that post-ayahuasca integration edge:
What happens when awakening stops being poetic and starts dismantling the lies, coping strategies, and identities that kept you safe.
We’ll talk about the quiet violence of trying to squeeze back into a life that no longer fits, the illusion of “one more ceremony” as a fix, and what real ayahuasca integration actually looks like over months and years, not weekends.

If your life feels two sizes too small right now, if you’re suspended between worlds after deep medicine work, this one is for you.

Who am I?

I’m David Vox. I spent years as a professional coach before my path turned fully toward ayahuasca integration.
For over a decade I’ve been in ongoing relationship with the medicine and supporting people in the long, often messy process of integrating ayahuasca into their bodies, nervous systems, relationships, service, and daily choices.

If you’re in that in-between place after ceremony – expanded, raw, and needing grounded guidance – I host a six-month Sacred Integration Facilitator Training for those walking the path of service, healing, and embodiment.
We go far beyond “how to have a nice ceremony” and into the deeper architecture of long-term integration, holding space, and responsible work with ayahuasca and other plant medicines.

You can explore upcoming integration circles, trainings, and resources at ayahuaschaintegration.com and davidvox.com.

Wherever this finds you, consider this episode a companion for that strange shoreline between lives.
Keep walking. Bare. Precise. Becoming.

TRANSCRIPT:

Have you outgrown your whole life and can you not feel the pressure of who you’re becoming pressing against the wall or the small shell of who you were?
Maybe you’ve been on this transmissional journey and now the job, the identity, some of your relationship, or the story of who you once were feels too tight to breathe in.

0:25
This week, I’m going to introduce you to Happy Little Hermit.
I even made a song for you.
And this is a tiny little creature who shows us what every awakening actually asks for.
We’re going to explore how this natural spiral of transformation, expansion, shedding, rebirth mirrors our own integration process and how to know when it’s time to move into the next shape of your becoming.

0:52
There once was a little hermit called a Happy Little Hermit because I didn’t come up with a good name.
He was also on this transformational journey between the seven seas.
It was a tiny, curious little hermit, and he was always growing mentally, physically and spiritually.

1:11
And one day he realized he couldn’t fit into the old shell of his life anymore.
This beautiful shell had kept him safe for years and now he couldn’t dance, he couldn’t sing, he couldn’t run, he could barely breathe.
Every thought he felt was just squeezed his breath heavy and he knew it was time to find a new shell.

1:34
So he started searching.
What shell was big enough?
What colour did he want?
What shade?
What would hold this new version of him?
He had once mistaken an ayahuasca cup for a shell and learned quickly that was not a good idea.
But eventually he found it on the top of the sandbank.

1:53
There it was, a shell, shining in all the rainbow colours, with sunlight dancing across the curves.
It was big enough for him to rest, to dance, to breathe, to live.
But there was a problem.
To claim this new shell, he had to leave the old one.

2:13
He had to squeeze himself out.
A tight, painful rebirth.
And then walk naked, mournable, across the sea bank.
He was terrified.
What if the other fish looked at him naked and laughed at him?

2:30
Or what if someone saw him and swallowed him whole?
So he waited in his old shell.
And as he waited, he suffocated more and more, growing, expanding and pressing against the walls of the shell that kept him safe.

2:47
Until one day it just became too painful to stay small and he pushed himself out and ran naked across the sandbank.
And finally he moved into that roomy, colorful rainbow shell and he’s still there, one happy little hermit, breathing, dancing and singing again.

3:11
If you’re in the after ayahuasca moment right now, or even before it on your transformational journey where life suddenly feels heavy and confusing and painful and you don’t know why, this is usually what’s happening.
Like the hermit, you’re grown and now some parts of your old identity, pain patterns, purpose, a story simply doesn’t fit anymore.

3:36
When we have a spiritual awakening, our consciousness expands, our truth, our beliefs, even our self concept, it all gets these new reference points.
They’re deeper, truer, and sometimes more vast.
And the shell, of course, is just a symbol.

3:54
It’s a spiral that symbolizes transformation.
We are always going deeper and deeper and deeper.
And every turn of that spiral brings us closer to the truth of who we are.
And that is a vulnerable phase of integration.

4:11
Because when you suddenly meet a truer version of yourself and it doesn’t match the outside of your life, when your perception cracks and you begin to see the world in its raw, electric truth, it’s easy to panic.
It’s easy to start looking for someone else who can tell you what all of this means, who can translate your inner mystery.

4:31
And many people, in that moment, they start running to the nearest person who seems to understand them, soaking up someone else’s version of their truth or their role or what their destiny should be.
But that’s when we forget what this journey really is.
It’s a return to your own spiral, to your own rhythm, and to your own shell of becoming.

4:54
I once met a beautiful woman at a ayahuasca retreat called Sarah, and she’s probably listening right now.
So I’m going to not put in too many details.
Sarah.
But I remember meeting her and she was sitting in an integration and she was sharing, saying I don’t feel this medicine.

5:13
I don’t feel anything at all.
I just want to go home to my cats and my Red Vine and just all of this sucks.
And in the facilitation with Sarah, she was asked to come forward into the circle and share all of the things she was frustrated with.

5:32
And she shared and shared, and eventually she was asked to lay down so that everyone who was resonating with her and was feeling the same way could come towards her.
And I could see her getting a bit emotional when she could see that there were people who were deeply resonating with her, gathering in a circle around her.

5:53
And when she lay down and closed her eyes, put on some beautiful music and everyone slowly and gently started touching her hands, her face, and Sarah started to feel and she started crying deeply.

6:12
When she came out of the experience, I could see a light that was back in Sarah’s eyes.
And I asked her, how long were you gone, Sarah?
And she looked at me and said, I have been asleep since childhood.

6:30
I haven’t felt since I was a child.
Suddenly she was out of her shell of protectiveness and she was gasping for air with her heart.
She, as many, had held her breath for so long in that old shell.

6:48
And when she opened her heart, she, after this retreat, found the partner and she moved into life where her heart could breathe and beat with her again.
And a lot of people in this face, when they start coming out of their shell, very often at these retreats, we see people after decades hiding, suddenly come out like a little turtle sticking their head out.

7:11
They breathe and they test the connection.
And they start realizing, OK, I can be myself.
I can have emotion.
I can be human again.
And then they go to circles and retreats and community gatherings, and they start to feel seen.
But then something triggers them, Vulnerability, exposure, comparison, and they retreat back into the shell, in and out, in and out.

7:35
And this is one of the core loops that block people from really stepping into their true path.
They never feel ready enough because they are still negotiating safety with the part of themselves that is terrified of being fully seen.
The part of them that will never accept to be fully seen and vulnerable.

7:53
Because if they do, that part of them also transforms and goes away.
And I get it.
Healing requires that shell of safety for a while, and you get to stay there for as long as you need.
Retreat, mentors, coaches, basis of belonging, those are like a warm blanket where you can remember safety again.

8:14
But the point of safety is to prepare you to live your life, to bring this magic into your path, into your relationships with yourself and others, with your gifts, with your service, and not to stay hidden.
Not to only live when you are at a retreat or in a swim room with a shaman or a spiritual teacher.

8:36
So imagine the hermit crab.
When it grows, the old shell becomes too tight and it starts looking for a new one.
Bigger, roomier and more fitting for what’s it’s now becoming.
But there’s no way to move from 1 shell to another without that in between moment, the naked walk across the sandbank.

8:53
No armour, no character, no certainty, completely exposed.
That naked moment is the threshold of integration.
It’s the walk between your old identity and a new life that matches your expanded consciousness and truer vibration.

9:12
We all came out of our mothers naked and vulnerable, and it must have been terrifying.
Yet the transformational part requires this again and again and again, to let parts of us die, to be reborn, so that we can become an even bigger and emptier vessel for consciousness.

9:30
And each surrender, each rebirth is us letting go of the ropes of the ego, of the trapeze of what we know, and letting ourselves fall through the air of this uncertain energy and into the net of spirit which holds our true frequency.

9:48
It’s always the surrender into a deeper version of our true self.
And if you’re on the ayahuasca journey, I can promise you every rebirth will be a bit deeper and scarier, more intimate meeting with your own vulnerability.
The more you think you processed, the more you get invited to meet it again and again.

10:08
And it’s not a punishment, but it’s truth showing up at the deeper level.
Most people see this new shell division of who they could become, and they want it.
That’s why they keep coming back to retreats.
But to walk towards it feels too naked, too uncertain.

10:26
So they crawl back into what’s familiar, and that’s when the suffocation begins.
When consciousness expands, it doesn’t shrink back.
It’s not possible.
If you once believed in Santa Claus and you now know Santa Claus doesn’t exist, you can’t go back to that reality.

10:45
And if your life doesn’t grow with it, you know it will start folding on top of itself.
Emotionally, physically, spiritually.
You can’t stay in the same protective patterns and still expect to breathe freely.
Healing always ask you to risk that naked walk from safety into expansion.

11:05
And this is where I feel there’s a big common distortion in modern spirituality.
I don’t know how many gurus and how many leaders also in the spiritual community that say the concept is to have no ego at all.

11:23
The concept is that you shouldn’t have a shell at all, that being is beyond identity and ego means enlightenment.
And this is something that I don’t find true because when I see the guru or the shaman or the facilitator, that is also a shell.

11:40
The guru shell, the shaman shell, the facilitator seashell.
So be mindful of the shiny shells that are being sold at the beach, the ones that promises your fulfillment, your wealth, your completion, your health.
Because true spirituality isn’t about buying a new shell.

11:58
It’s about choosing your own consciously.
And the danger is, if we let others sell us our next identity, we might end up living inside someone else’s version of truth.
And that will always create this spiritual hunger in an internal stress, a hollow that can be so deep and profound it sucks into an addiction or obsession.

12:22
I remember going to Bali and I went from healer to healer, from yoga farm to yoga barn to yoga.
Everything from teacher to teacher, chasing the perfect method or approach, looking for the perfect seashell of an identity.
And it felt like a spiritual marketplace, a buffet of borrowed self.

12:42
Until, I wonder, I just stopped chasing.
And I realized I was already on my path.
I couldn’t be more on my path if I even tried.
And that shopping for spiritual identities was really not the answer.

Because our shell, and your shell is the structure that can hold the life that you’ve touched.

13:02
Your body, your values, your relationships, your work, your service.
And the point is never to dissolve it, it’s to make sure it fits.
And this is where I see so many get stuck circling through these spiritual methodologies.
A retreat after retreat and ceremon after ceremony.

13:19
Refusing to make a choice that is consciously bears.
They keep waiting for someone else to choose it for them.
A shaman, a teacher, a coach, a psychic and astrologer, a therapist, Even Chachibiti.
How many of us has been talking to Chachibiti and hoping that Chachibiti could make a choice for us?

13:39
And the challenge with this is the choice itself is the pop.
That’s the moment you reclaim your free will, your power to receive, to decide, to expand.
And your new shell must have room for movement, for joy, for full expression, for mistakes, to cry, to rage, to dance, to sing, to Make Love wildly, without shame.

14:02
So let’s not get so holy in these new shells of ours that we forget the body.
And let’s not get so pure that we will get to live.
Because if we strip it down, that’s what the journey is about.
Each of us, the growing little hermit, learning to walk naked across the sandbank of spirit into the shell of our next becoming.

14:22
To heal isn’t just to face what hides.
It’s to walk forward, trembling, sometimes shaking, honest and alive until you find a container that finally lets your soul breed.
I remember doing this at the first ayahuasca retreat I ever went to.

14:41
It was the first time in a circle that I shared my story, and my entire body was shaking and I didn’t know it then, but I was the naked hermit, terrified, moving into my new shell.
And I could barely get some of the words out because I was shaking with anxiety and I was crying and crying.

15:06
And when that facilitation and integration session was complete during the day, I didn’t even know it.
But I had moved into the new shell of my becoming, and the truth that I had on the inside could finally also be the truth that I could share on the outside.

15:26
And when we start choosing a bigger shell, many of us walked, you know, looking at many of these different options, maybe they’re too shiny and too humble or too spiritual, too ordinary.
And we’re so afraid of this choice.
We circle and we hesitate, and we wait for a sign.

15:43
But what I’ve learned from doing this work for a decade now is that right and wrong is never the right question.
The real question is what is true for you?
Because integration begins the moment that the inside starts matching the outside.

16:01
When integrity becomes something you live, not something you talk or think about.
When truth, trust, and transparency starts to dance together.
It’s the triangle of transformation, the triangle that makes transmission real.

16:19
And I learned that once in a way I didn’t expect.
As they say, you get the medicine you need, not the medicine you want.
And I had invested a very large amount in a transformational teacher that I trusted so deeply.
And then he lied to me.

16:38
And one of my superpowers is picking up lies.
It’s not the energy that I like, and it is so important in my work because sometimes we lie to ourself and we need someone to mirror that back to us.
But when he lied to me, something just broke inside of me.

I was sitting there hurt and confused and asking myself should I stay silent to keep the peace or stand in my truth and risk to lose this relationship, this mentorship and also this community.

17:05
And my partner at the time looked at me when I was literally vomiting during the night and he said, David, just walk in your truth and see how far you can go.
And that one line rearranged my life.
It is actually what has led me here, walking in my own truth.

17:24
Because living in your own truth, it can never be a neutral act.
It shakes things on the inside and sometimes on the outside.
It can shake the shells of those who aren’t living in theirs.
They can get very uncomfortable if you’re living your truth and they’re not.

17:40
It can trust in their comfort.
It can expose things that are false around you or inside of you.
But if I could give you one seed from this episode, it would be this.
It is so beyond beautiful to live a life where you walk in your own truth, a life where you stop running from it, stop hiding from it, stop distracting yourself from it, and simply let your truth move through your heart, your throat, your bones.

18:12
Because no matter your choices or story, your shell will never look like anyone else’s.
The spiral that is right now turning inside of you will, when it reaches the surface, twist and turn and curve in its own strange, perfect way.

18:32
That’s what it means to be an individual, to follow the shape of your own becoming and not bury it in shame.
I believe every single soul on this planet.
It’s like a divine little puzzle piece.
And if you put all the puzzle pieces back together, you have totality of the cosmos, the totality of the Great Spirit, and it turns back into nothingness.

18:59
Your puzzle piece is a piece of the Great Spirit.
It’s its own unique, vibrant energy.
And without this puzzle piece, heaven is not complete.
The entire universe.
If you destroyed your piece, I think the entire universe would collapse.

19:18
That is how important you are.
That is how powerful you are.
Your unique frequency, your unique spirit and energy is an authentic true vibration that only you have.
It’s an instrument in this cosmic cabaret that only you have.

19:35
It’s a song and a music only you can play.
And in my experience in this work, our job is simply to receive our true self and express it in whatever shape or form that looks like for you.
Carl Young once said that people would do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul.

19:57
And that’s what we do every time we chase the right way to be or try to fit into someone else’s idea of what awakening should look like.
I just the other day saw this old woman who knits titties for charity.

20:12
Thousands of titties.
Beautiful little titties.
And her eyes was glowing, she was so radiant and she was happier than most people that I met in any spiritual circle.
And I’m pretty sure when she goes to heaven or to the other side, I doubt the great Spirit will say you were supposed to knit whales.

20:31
You chose wrong.
She has found her joy in what was hers to give.
And I feel that is what we’re all here to do.
And now on this path, when it comes to all of these choices, people often come to me and also ask, should I try ayahuasca?

20:48
Should I study with this teacher or this coach?
Should I try this medicine?
And my answer is always the same.
This is not something you buy or you get converted into.
You know, ayahuasca is not a sales pitch.
It’s medicine you need to live your life.

21:04
And if it’s your part, you will know because when ayahuasca, for example, calls, it’s unmistakable.
She might go from something you never heard about and suddenly it’s everywhere.
In your dreams, in a podcast like this one or in a conversation, you know, with your home is your intuition suddenly unmutes and says, excuse me, this is it.

21:27
This is where we need to go.
And that’s what a true call feels like.
It’s never forced.
It’s never sold.
It’s never hyped.
It’s never found this like tight little container that you have to push and control.
It flows.
You’re feeling called and invited.

21:44
And that implies to everything, medicine, therapy, coaching or service.
There’s no right or wrong form because there’s so much conscious power in the act of saying this is my calling, this is what feels true to me, this is my shell.

22:03
Because the moment we ask others, what should I do, what Paul feels right, we start outsourcing the one thing that actually creates our reality, our free will.
And when we hand over that power to a teacher or guru or a religion or chachibati or fear, we lose our sovereignty.

22:20
We trade our integrity for our belonging or for our comfort.
And that choice eventually becomes unbearable to live inside.
At least if you are on this path and you keep expanding.
So this is where integration gets real.
You have to bring your consciousness home.

22:37
Bring your choices home, anchor them in your heart and move from there.
That’s when your new shell begins to glow from within.
Because it’s a lie with your own decision.
Choice is the moment your soul grows hands.

22:53
Because if you don’t choose yourself, it’s not your shell.
It’s not your life and the lesson?
You came here to live.
The diamonds that are already waiting for you on your path will only reveal itself once you start walking it.
Most of our early shell, of course, were chosen for us by family and culture and religion.

23:11
We learned that sacrificing our truth for safety or to bend ourself into belonging was the right way.
And for a while, that’s how we coped.
But the shell of your becoming is different.
It’s carved with your hands.
Every real choice made from truth shapes the new form, and if you don’t act on it, it stays a fantasy, a dream without a doorway.

23:36
And maybe you know that feeling when you’re in a life is bright and expansive, but your outer life hasn’t caught up yet.
The 8 between what you know and what you live.
That’s where integration is needed, and something starts shifting quickly.

23:54
The moment you start choosing.
You begin to live at the pace of your own truth.
You stop waiting for permission, and you start meeting life in real time.
It’s vulnerable, sometimes terrifying, but it’s also so rich, because nothing compares to walking inside a life you actually choose.

24:14
And when anyone, religion, a government, a teacher, a parent, or a partner tells you that you can choose your own shell, you can think, feel a love in the way you want, they’re no longer guiding you.
They’re colonizing your spirit, your free will, your freedom to choose is the most sacred expression of your soul.

24:33
It’s what makes you a creator instead of a follower or a slave.
It’s what turns consciousness into an experience.
And anyone who tries to override that, even for your own good, isn’t serving truth.
They’re serving control.
And a moment you remember that your choices are all holy, no matter what they are, that your rhythm and calling are sacred.

24:56
You reclaim the center of your life.
For me, realizing this was a big process.
And I remember sitting with the shaman ones who asked me, David, what are you suffering with?
And I said, guilt.
I have so much guilt for the things that I did when I was younger, like in my early 20s, and I was drinking and I created a mess.

25:18
And he looked at me and said, what made you believe you had a choice?
And I said, well, of course I had a choice.
I know that I can have.
I could have chosen better.
And I’m so mad at myself.
And I feel so guilty for not choosing better for myself.
And he smiled, But you didn’t choose.

25:36
Why not?
And I didn’t have an answer.
I thought I had a choice.
And I was feeling so much guilt for not choosing better.
And then he said, when we’re unhealed, fragmented, unconscious, we don’t yet have our free will, not fully.

25:56
We act from wounds, from programming, from the parts of us still asleep.
Healing is not about becoming holy.
It’s about regaining our full free will.
And this landed so deeply with me, maybe because I had been brutally unconscious and lost.

26:13
Because that’s where this work really is, remembering how to choose again, to choose from love instead of fear, from equilibrium instead of reactivity, from presence instead of a pattern.

26:29
And every time you choose from that place, not from the wound, not from the old shell, you prove your healing is real.
You’re living within your expanded, truer identity.
And every decision that comes from love, from truth, is getting you cozy into that new lie.

26:48
And that’s sort of the sacred point of all of this.
Free will might be given, but we forget it.
We trade it to fit into our communities, our cultures, our religion.
So eventually it’s not just given to us.

27:03
We have to grow it.
We have to earn it through our awareness.
And every time you breed, when that old pattern, says Ron, for all of us who have a lot of trauma, we have learned to close ourselves up.
So every time you open up and the old shell shell says close, you are flexing that free will.

27:23
You’re showing life that you’re no longer ruled by your conditioning.
You’re already stepping slowly and tenderly into the shell of your becoming.
Each of those moment choosing love instead of fear, curiosity instead of judgement, softness instead of defence, is another breath inside your new home, a healthier body, a truer relationship, a calmer nervous system, a life that finally fits you.

27:53
And maybe that’s what free real really is.
It’s not like this grand cosmic drama between heaven and hell, but the quiet, steady courage to live what’s real for you now.
To choose the shell that lets your soul breathe, to stretch in it, to dance in it, to rest in it until the next time you grow again, Because you will.

28:15
That’s the nature of this.
We grow, we shed, and we choose again.
And each time I feel we remember a little bit more of what true freedom and abundance really is, and how amazing it is to live inside this mystery that we call life.

28:34
So every time you grow, you’re going to face another sandbank, another naked walk, another invitation to trust life again.
And that’s the spiral we keep circling home, each time a little braver, a little freer, and a little bit more willing to let the sea carry us where we belong.

28:54
So when the tide rises again for you, don’t find it.
It’s just your soul asking for a little bit more room to breathe.
Here’s a little song for all of my hermit friends that are growing.

Happy little hermit, crawling on the sand,
trading your old armour for the breath of open land.

29:27
O happy little hermit, you outgrown what made you smoke,
And now the sea is deeply calling.
You can finally hear rid of the road.
Oh, happy little Herman.

29:46
Now you get to choose your shell
rough around, O rainbow pride, your home, your living sail.
Oh, happy little Herman,
No one tells you who to be.

30:07
You’re the tide, you’re the traveller,
You’re the teacher, your the sea.

Oh happy little hermit, barefoot, brave and true.
Every step between the shells is burning something deep anew.

30:30
Oh, happy little hermit, the shore hums your song.
You’re not lust you are becoming and you’ve been growing all along.

30:46
Oh happy little hermit, have a beautiful week.
Keep walking that sandbank bear brave and unique.
Oh, happy little hermit, I’ll see you next tide around.

31:10
Another shell to grow into, and not truth you might have found,
O happy little hermit.

Song and podcats by David Vox for Ayahuasca Integration.org