#176 Ayahuasca, Trauma & the Path Back to Yourself with Ranko Meraya

Yeah, well, that's the thing.

I think that's part of why we call Ayahuasca grandmother is because she'll show you what you need to see.

She'll help you kind of get to where you need to get to.

And it's challenging though.

So, but she'll nurture you along the way.

She'll hold your hand the whole way, especially when it's tough, but she's not afraid to show you things that you need to see that will ultimately encourage your growth.

And that will ultimately free your soul to be the purest expression of itself.

What are some misconceptions that people have? I mean, plant medicine has gotten a lot more popular in the last five, 10 years.

I think it's great.

But then with that also comes... just different people's stories, sometimes some fear around it because they heard one person had one bad experience or one shaman might've been out of integrity or something.

And then they generalize all ceremonies to be that way or just the whole movement to be that way.

So what are some misconceptions that typically people might have? I

think the worst thing to actually do is go online and search ayahuasca.

If people really want to learn about the medicine in a pure way, I think this is actually easy to find online, the Ayahuasca Manifesto.

It's like a 50-page PDF, and we offer that to anyone that's going to sit with us.

And so it's fantastic at answering any questions because it's written from the perspective of Ayahuasca talking to you.

And so it handles any questions that I think would arise and probably anything you would want to know about the medicine, what it's doing, what you would be doing with it, how people are working with it, the experience, all these things that I think are put out very eloquently, expressed very eloquently.

Another thing is, yeah, as far as the fear aspect, That is, of course, an important thing overall for safety.

You need to feel safe and ultimately trust, hopefully yourself, that you're doing this and honoring your soul's calling.

And then especially feel safe with the people that you're going to be sitting with, the group.

not necessarily the people that are going to be there because there's a level of trust with that, right? Because you're not going to know that if there's 10 people, then you're not going to necessarily know any of them.

And part of that is trust, like trusting that the medicine is orchestrating this for you and for your highest good.

but ultimately the the most important trust is with the facilitator or the shaman and i think that has to be something that you feel ultimately and there's a layer of self-trust within that and you ideally would have done some screening with the person the group to to really understand like the process of the shaman facilitators And that trust really needs to be there.

That safety is so important for you to be able to let go and be vulnerable, allow yourself to really just be exposed to the medicine and for the medicine to really do its magic with you.

And then there's, yeah, that piece of if one has heard a bad experience, I think that's the biggest thing is like doing your own screening as well.