The Ceremony Experience

A traditional ceremony usually runs 4–6 hours in a dark or dimly lit space, held by facilitators through icaros (songs), silence, and careful attention. You drink a cup of the brew, lie or sit with an intention, and let the medicine move through you — often as visions, body sensations, purging, tears, laughter, or long stretches of stillness. Every ceremony is different; the container (people, music, setting) shapes the experience as much as the plant itself.

You drink the brew, sit or lie in a dark space, and over 30–60 minutes the medicine takes hold. Expect 4–6 hours of visions, emotional waves, purging, silence, and icaros (sacred songs) from the facilitators. It is more like deep surgery than a party.

Purging — vomiting, crying, shaking, sometimes diarrhea — is understood in the tradition as the body releasing what the medicine has surfaced. It is almost always followed by relief. Purging is not a sign something is wrong; it is often when the healing lands.