3: From my first time taking uní (ayahuasca) to a one-month Mamé dieta

After having been shown the roots of my fear of abandonment and commitment, I came out of my second uní (ayahuasca) ceremony at the retreat feeling exhausted. "I should not have done this" was going through my head repeatedly. Yet, several weeks later I found myself in the initiation ceremony of a four-week Mamé dieta in which we would drink uní (ayahuasca) every second day.

In this blog series I open up about my experience with the medicine of uní (more commonly known as ayahuasca) and I will share some of my experiences from doing the Mamé dieta. Previously, I wrote about meeting, understanding, and learning to recognize my fundamental of being alone. This deep fear had come up during the second ceremony of an ayahuasca retreat that marked one of my first experiences with the medicine. In this post, I will share how I went from regretting doing ayahuasca and going so deeply inwards to doing even more and going even deeper.

Still recovering from the second ceremony, I asked the medicine to not take me inwards again during the third ceremony, and so I did not. There were still some significant experiences and feelings that came up, but none of them shook up my world and being the way the second ceremony had done. Although I had set the intention to not go inwards myself, I still felt disappointment. Whereas I had felt regret right after the second ceremony because I did not want to know of my fundamental fear, I finally realized that being aware of a fear is more helpful than remaining ignorant to it while it still influences your life in every way. I had needed the (relative) peace of the third ceremony to come to that insight. And so, when everyone shared their stories and experiences during the integration circle on the final day of the retreat, I cried not from regret, but from gratitude.

Yet, I still felt uneasy and disappointed that I had not been able to delve deeper into my fundamental fear of being alone with the medicine. Not that I needed ayahuasca to process this, but I did feel that that would be a lot more profound and transformational. So what now? How does one integrate such a core realization about oneself?

Anticipating the need for integration, and thinking I was going to need to do that secluded and alone somewhere, I had booked some days in a cabin in the mountains by myself for after the retreat. This decision was ironically painful considering that I had just learned of my fundamental fear to be alone. In fact, I was not craving alone time at all. Luckily, the cabin was right next to the house of the owners: a Swiss woman and a Brazilian man who had been living in in this house for many years with a now six year old daughter. Most of my days, I spent in their house being part of their family life. We went grocery shopping together, we cooked together, I joint an online yoga class on the beautiful platform looking out over the mountains, I went to pick up the daughter from school and even joined in on her weekly horse riding lesson. The remaining hours I spent in the cabin reflecting, both individually as well as through long calls with some of my closest friends. I soon realized that this integration process was not in any way an easy 'sit down and journal about what came up' process.

And so the realization that it would have been helpful to do part of the integration process under the guidance of ayahuasca grew. Maybe there was a way... At the end of the week, there would be one more open ceremony hosted by the Yawanawa at Uní Retreats. I would have to extend my stay, rebook my flight. I seriously considered it, but ended up sticking to my plans. There would be another chance.

And actually that moment was more within reach than I realized. During the week with the Yawanawa everyone had been invited for a cultural festival in which they celebrated the Yawanawa identity and traditions that has been structurally oppressed and endangered for hundreds of years since the colonial period. The festival would take place in Aldeia Nova Esperança in the state of Acre in October. As an anthropologist, I was extremely curious. Being invited into the village of Indigenous People that celebrate their identity and traditions? Probably every anthropologist's dream. The only problem: that specific week I would be on my period and I was not very excited to be going through that in the middle of a week of celebrations, far away in the forest. So I asked chief Isku Kua if there were other possibilities to visit the village. He brought me in contact with Lucie and through her I learned about the Mamé dieta that would be hosted in the village in November.

The Mamé dieta consisted of two or four weeks of a diet that was both physical, mental and spiritual. The physical part included what you expect from a diet: little and selective food. The mental part, in my experience, consisted of meeting yourself in moments you feltlike giving up, teaching you perseverance. The spiritual part included working with the the medicine of ayahuasca every second day of the dieta. This was the other chance I had hoped for.

During the retreat, there were some people doing a dieta and I had been intrigued. Looking back, I think a seed was planted in that time. So without spending too much time contemplating what the details of the diet entailed exactly, I decided I wanted to go. The main obstacle, then, was money. Spending a month in the forest with families taking care of you, people preparing special foods for you, partaking in countless ceremonies, and intensive study of Yawanawa traditions and language logically costs money. For my travel budget, it was a lot. After some contemplating and calculating I decided I would cut into my savings (which, thankfully, I had and thus I had a financial possibility to go). The rationale, besides the strong feeling that this was the right decision, that pushed me over the edge to a yes was that one ceremony had shown me deeper truths than perhaps a lifetime of therapy sessions could have done. Thus it would be a good investment in myself long term.

Finally, then there was one more decision to make: would I do the two week dieta or the four-week dieta? If you know me, you know that I am a bit stubborn and always in for a challenge. So, logically, not taking into account the intensity of the dieta at all, my thinking process was as follows: it would take four flights, a long car ride and 8 hours on a boat to get me to the village. If I was going to spend so much time travelling, I might as well stay there for as long as possible right? About two days into the dieta, having finally heard the details and learned about how challenging it would be, I slightly hated (in a loving way) myself for my stubbornness (thanks family I inherited that from).

However, in the end it absolutely the right decision. I truly believe that everything happens exactly the way it is supposed to. For example, if I would have gone deeper inwards during the third ceremony, it might not have been as beneficial since I did not feel ready to go inward. If I had done that extra ceremony, extending my stay in Itaipava, I probably would have been less inclined to do the dieta. And thus, I would have missed out on the profundity of insights that the dieta would give me. If I would not have seen people do the dieta during the retreat week (and see them being okay), I may have wanted to know more details on what a dieta would entail exactly in order for me to trust that I would also be okay. And if I would have known about all the details of the dieta, such as that I could not drink water for a month, I might have gotten too afraid and ended up not doing it.

And so for me, going into the four-week Mamé dieta without knowledge of what I had actually committed to turned out to be one of the best and most impactful decisions of my life.

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