#334 World Ayahuasca Forum: What the Latest Research Reveals About Plant Medicine

So ayahuasca is in the name of the conference and it's a plant medicine from Central and South America.

I'm going to be talking more about that here in this session and I'm going to be talking about why this particular forum was so transformational and so unique.

It was a conference where It had both indigenous groups from Central and South America, especially from Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador.

And it also had attendees who were researchers who've been researching ayahuasca as well as other plant medicines or what might be considered psychedelic plant medicines and And so there were scientists present as well as practitioners and shamans and those who have been supporting others to access and use ayahuasca in a safe and effective way.

The conference actually had 1,700 attendees, and I'm so grateful that I was able to attend.

It was a conference where there were four different rooms going for three days, so that meant that we were choosing between four different sessions from 9 a.m. to sometimes 8 or 9 p.m. over three days.

So there was a lot of information presented, including two really well-known keynote presenters, Dennis McKenna and Paul Stamets.

And I'll tell you more about their presentations here in a minute.

It also included, uh, I don't even know how many research presentations.

So there were researchers who were coming to present their latest research related to ayahuasca, as well as some research on psilocybin, which is from magic mushrooms.

It really was a forum bringing together the latest on the science of psychedelic therapy, especially related to ayahuasca and psilocybin, and also therapy.

the indigenous people who were present.

Oh my gosh, the indigenous people opened the whole event and closed the event with their prayer song and chants to bring the spirituality to the event that is consistent with how the indigenous people use ayahuasca as a medicine.

So Just to describe a little bit more what is ayahuasca and how it's used and what I want to present to you is some of the research studies that really caught my attention and made me want to share with you and make sure you're aware of it.

And then also I'll share with you a bit about what Dennis and Paul brought to us with their presentations.

So...

The presentations during the conference covered everything from the latest on ayahuasca to legalities of use and conversation and dialogue about how to integrate indigenous use with modern use so that more people can benefit from ayahuasca.

this herbal plant medicine called ayahuasca.

That's really the core that brought us all together is that everyone sees that there's so much potential benefit for the use of ayahuasca.

And it's about how to make access safe and also how to integrate what these indigenous people have learned about using ayahuasca after hundreds of years of use.