Ayahuasca tourism: the story of Marisa

"(…) maybe this is what happens when the North meets the South and the Amazon and New York City try to join forces." (Marisa S, 2010, p.

5)

Marisa came from New York. She went to the Peruvian Amazon to teach yoga to "a group of artists, writers, and seekers" within the context of an ayahuasca retreat run by a Peruvian shaman she calls "Maestro." This section will focus on Marisa's story as her narrative exemplifies Ayahuasca tourism's sociocultural setting, characterized by including individuals from several different cultural backgrounds who travel to the rainforest looking to partake in ayahuasca within a traditional context.

The table above (table 1) shows the total narratives that took place int this context (nine in total). The narrative by Marisa S, entitled "The Resolute Path of the Root Chakra," turned out

7 Marisa S. "The Resolute Path of the Root Chakra: An Experience with ayahuasca (exp85981)". Erowid.org. Jul 8, 2010. erowid.org/exp/85981 – Accessed spring 2020.

Table 1 Ayahuasca tourism - Atlas.ti project results

to be the most relevant for analysis, with 27% of the total number of references and quotations alluding to ayahuasca tourism. Marisa's story is approached from two angles: the context in which she finds herself (an ayahuasca retreat in the Amazon) and the content of the visions she experienced.

Marisa arrived in a remote location in the Amazon, and as soon as she touched the "red muddy soil," she was greeted by the retreat organizer with a blunt "So you're drinking tonight, right?".

According to Marisa, the host was in charge of many people, including international travelers, a Hollywood crew, a shaman, guest speakers, and authors. It was the grand opening of the ayahuasca retreat in which she would be a yoga instructor. The people who attended were described as artists, scientists, and writers, tattooed, dreaded, pierced, clean-shaven, and freshly showered people from all sorts of backgrounds, all having in common the desire to partake in the brew.

Marisa went to teach yoga and meditation in the retreat but found out that the local shaman was against those practices. According to Marisa, the "Maestro" believed these forms of spirituality were empty. "Yoga and yoga teachers were looked down upon," according to her, for going against the shaman's belief structure, which Marisa described as harsh and survivalist.

She hoped, however, that the shaman would realize that yoga could be complementary to his work.

She partook in ayahuasca on two different occasions. Her first experience took place as soon as she arrived at the retreat, and in her own words, it was a fairy tale. She described blissful moments of allowing herself to be embraced by ayahuasca until she "remembered being One."

Her second experience was much more confrontational and challenging and proved to challenge her values. We will analyze both ayahuasca experiences in relation to the

her foam mattress while a chorus of frogs, insects, and "machine elves" surrounded her silence, she arrived at the "Source of Being":

"The peak brought me to the Source of Being. The face of a female deity, large and hovering, made of swirling geometric patterns and neon pinks, greens and blue, welcomed me home. Oh yeah, I'm here. I've followed my symbols, my clues, and the scent of myself, back to my Self. I remember now. It's all the One. I am the One. Life is a game of make-believe, where I

forget the aloneness of the One through splintering into fragments of self-illusion, only to eventually remember again. I've remembered before and will forget again, and on and on (…) Spiralling in and out of knowing and

being One, I let go into aya's embrace". (Marisa S, 2010, p. 4)

Even though she describes her experience as taking place "in the middle of nowhere," her peak experience is one of being "in and out of knowing and being the One." She claims to arrive in the "Source of Being" in an interaction with a female deity who welcomed her home. She describes having followed the scent of herself until reaching her Self in the game of make-believe that life is, where she will remember and forget the true nature and source of being again. All is the One; she is the One.

As Marisa stayed longer in the retreat and prepared for the next experience, her interaction with the local shaman would become conflictive. Feelings of being in a hostile environment filled with cultural differences, would pervade her story from then on. On occasions, she would wonder if she did not have any sense of fear about "drinking a repulsive mind-altering brew and being left alone in the jungle" to survive by herself. Phrases such as "what if I get eaten by a jaguar or bitten by a deadly spider or squeezed to death by an anaconda or choke on my own vomit" makes her narrative appear apprehensive.

Such feelings comprise Marisa's set: how she felt, what she thought of her surroundings, whether she felt safe in them. As we read in the previous passage, her narrative describes different fears, from being eaten alive by deadly Amazonian creatures to being in the middle of the jungle drinking a hallucinogen. Nonetheless, despite the fact of feeling somewhat

unprotected and challenged, she had the conviction and belief that "the universe [was] taking care [of her]."

As stated above, her relationship with the shaman is one of conflict. She describes a harsh person filled with "shamachismo," whom she perceives as having complete disregard for the comfort of the practitioners in the retreat, and who downplays her beliefs by being against the practice of yoga in the retreat center. Marisa describes the shaman's opinion about Icaros, yoga, and meditation as "small therapy for Westerners." She felt "no sympathy or nurturing in his expressions." Marisa had a sense that the Maestro did not care about anyone's journey, however horrific or beautiful:

"(…) what about at least a little bit of initial guidance through these uncharted realms before pushing us out of the nest and into the jaguar's gaping mouth? I know Maestro doesn't want to be a guru, but wouldn't it perhaps speed up this process of Self-discovery if we at least had a tour of

the area first before being abandoned?" (Marisa S, 2010, p. 3)

Marisa's setting was very challenging. She felt unprotected by the shaman, daunted by her surroundings, and even abandoned and thrown into "the jaguar's gaping mouth." In her story, she would describe not being aligned with the shaman's values and methods of "eliciting spiritual transformation," which were described as survivalist in contrast with her "gentle and nurturing approach." Despite her first ayahuasca experience being positive, her feelings of general discomfort would impact her as her time in the retreat went on.

Marisa's description of the retreat included chefs, jewelers, laundry services, and a pool in

through the arts of yoga and meditation, and of seeing love as the ultimate reality, I certainly had moments of What the F*$#? when it came to

Maestro's methods and teachings." (Marisa S, 2010, p. 5)

Marisa's story is one of cultural shock. Her belief structure was at odds with her surroundings and with the local shaman in particular. The previous excerpt is one of the most interesting in Marissa's tale as it depicts the complex cultural interactions implicit in the sociocultural setting of ayahuasca tourism in the Amazon. Marisa, a yoga instructor from New York, describes a form of spirituality that centers around "relaxing and letting go" through "the arts of yoga and meditation" and seeing "love as the ultimate reality," a belief structure which found no commonalities with the shaman's "methods and teachings." This structure would be challenged further in her next ayahuasca ceremony.

Her second ayahuasca experience takes place after she has spent some time in the retreat. It is shaped by challenging feelings, which leave her with a sense of existential crisis where she states having lost "her meaning." Her discomfort with the shaman's methods will be part of the context of this experience. In here, the setting of cultural shock feeds feelings of uneasiness in the practitioner, thus set and setting amplifying each other.

As the sun went down, Marisa sat and waited for the "vile solution" to arrive. She drank some amount, but her cup was half full. She felt dubitative about drinking the whole cup, but she said to herself, "Don't be a wuss, you have to drink it all." She struggled, but she managed to drink the whole dose. Since Rob, the retreat coordinator, translated the words from the shaman and said, "you must go into your fears," Marisa prepared herself by taking a deep breath and proceeded to dive into "the abysmal depths" of her being. According to her story, her mind

"went into hyper drive," and she lost her sense of self for 5 hours in what felt a "voyage of despair."

Her second ayahuasca experience is written off as being very challenging, both mentally and physically. An experience so strong that it challenged her belief system and left her with a sense of existential despair:

"My journey had reminded me of the complete and utter meaninglessness of all of existence, besides the meaning that we give it. Where before I could

understand that and feel confidence and purpose in the thought of the individual giving life its significance, now I felt cheated, like I had truly wanted all of this matter to matter for something, and in the end didn't. I

felt that the cosmos had held me naked and upside down by my feet, pointing and laughing with a big F*** You at all I held to be true and

sacred". (Marisa S, 2010, p. 7)

As has been shown up until this point, Marisa arrived in the Amazon with a definite set of values and ideas which were confronted by difference: how challenging the environment felt, how Amazonian shamanism disregarded her approach to spirituality, and finally by the ayahuasca experience that, far from confirming her beliefs, disputed them. In this second experience, she feels the cosmos has fooled her, and she now doubts everything she considers true and sacred.

After the ceremony she describes feeling lost for some days, daunted by the meaninglessness of life when she meets Taka, "a soul-brother." She recalls sharing her experiences with him and how he helped her through his care and compassion. "In a short exchange, he began to give me back my meaning," she states, enough to start recovering and join her peers in going to an Amazonian school to help paint and clean the space for the local children:

"Service, karma yoga, doing for others without expectation, and openhearted generosity began to restore me even further. Seeing the joy on the school children's faces as we came together to make their surroundings

travellers of this hapless journey we cling to and call life". (Marisa S, 2010, p. 7)

Finally with those words, she ends her story. The idea of acquiring an "expanded focus"

through "being blown apart" or having a challenging experience would have caused her to now see the world differently and "include more of [her] real self, shadow and all." Marisa slowly picked up the pieces of herself that were scattered by the ayahuasca experience, and by being put in a position of having to reconstruct her meaning, she found a new sense of self by "doing for others" and reconnecting via having a "greater patience and compassion" with other humans or "fellow travellers."

Marisa's narrative ends on a reconciliation with the shaman who, according to her, finally allowed the travelers to practice yoga in the ritual space. She reflects on the retreat as a community of people from different parts of the Earth who gather around healing. "If we were as varied as the rainbow spectrum," she says, talking about the diversity of the retreat members, then the shaman in her eyes represented the "blazing fire of the red, root chakra" which Marisa relates to the Earth, and other concepts such as "survival," "body," "pain" and "instincts."

4.1.2.1 The rainforest as a setting: analysis of Marisa's narrative

Marisa's tale is one of cultural shock. Her story described the lack of compatibility between her beliefs and those of the shaman. The rainforest appeared to be a hostile place, ideologically, culturally, and environmentally.

Marisa's relationship with the shaman is entirely worthy of analysis. She is faced with the fact that the shaman does not align with her values; he is against the practice of yoga inside the retreat. When she states how shocking the shaman's general rejection of her spiritual practices is, we could hypothesize she is approaching the shaman's environment with a consolidated set of beliefs, which she considers to be fundamentally compatible with other spiritual practices.

When the shaman expresses his dismissal of the foreign practices, she appears troubled and describes how her approach to spiritual awakening is "much more gentle" in sharp contrast with a survivalist's harsh "DIY" spirituality of hard confrontation to catalyze transformation.

She concludes her story by reconciling the shaman's image, whom she makes sense of through the concept of "root chakra," which in her perspective is the Earth's instinctual energy.

The fact that "an eclectic group of seekers" found themselves in a retreat in the Amazon rainforest, which offered ayahuasca alongside teaching yoga and meditation, is a glimpse of a much larger reality of how ayahuasca is intertwined in a global market of spiritualities and new age practices. The brew is consumed alongside other exotic and detraditionalized spiritual practices, which are believed to be fundamentally compatible.

Her first experience with ayahuasca is described as one of oneness, where she "remembers"

her divine nature. Marisa has just arrived in the retreat, and, as she states, she did not have much time to "decompress," providing the context and setting of this experience. It is very suggestive that she had an experience of "remembering" she is "the one," and everything is "the one," as it would seem a confirmation of her beliefs. Interesting about her tale is that this claim appears to be a transcendental experience of oneness and gnosis. Regardless of whether there are authentic and unauthentic mystical experiences "out there," the word "remembering" gives the sense of the practitioner confirming her pre-existing beliefs in what she thinks she is supposed to feel in these states.

After interacting with the sociocultural setting, her subsequent ayahuasca experience is challenging both mentally and physically and leads to a sort of crisis of meaning. As we read, she felt as though the universe had laughed at her by tearing apart her personal transcendental framework. However, how did she gain her "meaning" back?

On the one hand, she had peer support. She had the chance to talk about her experience with a fellow practitioner which is very important because the group ceremony allows for moments

way she regains meaning: she does by helping others. This is explicitly related to the setting in which Marisa is drinking ayahuasca. She is in the daunting Amazon, where she feels uncomfortable, and it is in the interaction with this environment –cleaning and painting a school for indigenous children- that she reconstructs her meaning around the idea of cooperating and supporting others. The idea of an insight being correlated with an experience's context happens in this case after the ceremony and during a phase were the practitioner seems to be trying to make sense of the event, and it is by interacting with her environment that she gains insight in having compassion for "the fellow travelers of the hapless journey we call life."

The practitioner considered both her first and second ayahuasca experiences as essential and meaningful. They were integrated into her conclusion as she understands, on the one hand, the importance of community in the restoration of meaning through peer support and giving to others. And on the other, the importance of "knowing how to be alone" in the memory of "being the One", unaccompanied.

The challenging experience and "the slow process of re constructing meaning," point to a exigent episode both mentally and physically, which shatters the practitioner's previous belief system (already defied by the setting) and brings about a new one by picking up the pieces and building a new sense of self, which includes different, previously unrecognized values: "I now saw the world from an expanded focus, as if being blown apart caused my peripheral vision to expand and include more of my real self, shadow and all."

Marisa's experience leaves questions about the relationship between psychedelics and the placebo response, also known as the meaning response. The pondering about placebo and psychedelics' stems from the relationship between expectancy, religious beliefs, and psychedelics' disposition to augment or magnify environmental elements and psychological makeup. Nevertheless, this analysis falls out of the scope of this work.

In contrast, her second experience compels us to look into psychedelics' ability to challenge established values and the subsequent engagement in meaning-making processes to integrate the experiences further and create a new perspective that includes insights learned. This will be expanded on in the theoretical discussion.