[dnc]

While I was on a retreat this year in a Peruvian village, I was told by several natives (Shipibo people) that, by their tradition (some estimations are that Shipibo tribes have been using Ayahuasca for millenias), Ayahuasca is orally taken in healing ceremonies by their shamans only. Traditionally, in the normal course of a healing ceremony, it is not a patient who takes 'the medicine' or 'the plant teacher' (Ayahuasca), but the shaman in order to learn from the plant what his patient illness is and how to go about healing it. Also traditionaly, Ayahuasca is taken during shamanic training (which takes years, if not a whole life) as a part of a special and very strict diet that can last between several weeks to a year or more, depending on a plant that one is dieting. During the diet shaman apprentice is supposed to take Ayahuasca, but only at the beginning and at the end of the diet, if it is a short one, or every once in couple of months if the diet is longer. The diet is a way to become familiar with the plant and learn what it has to teach you and Ayahuasca, the teacher plant, is used as a sort of a learning facilitator. From my understanding, a practice of organizing Ayahuasca ceremonies and giving the brew to foreigners in exchange for money has been relatively recently established with rising popularization of Ayahuasca and demand for it from abroad.

[hungerstrike]

I read a fascinating book called The Cosmic Serpent [0] wherein a team of biologists went to Peru to document the kinds of things that shamans have learned by taking Ayahuasca.

If you want to know more about this, I highly recommend it as basic reading.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/865516.The_Cosmic_Serpen...

[bigbugbag]

French director Jan Kounen made a documentary with the shipibo tribe while he was filming his blueberry adaptation.

This documentary is called other worlds and you can watch it on googletube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAaCUyCWPRU

[Radim]

     the shaman in order to learn from the plant what his patient illness is and how to go about healing it.

And how was that working out for them, from what you could see? Did patients there prefer the "traditional" or the "western" medicine?

[dnc]

I was not long enough to make any general conclusions, but from what I could see it is a mixture. I saw quite a few 'westerners' who had given up 'western' medicine and came to try Ayahuasca for various reasons. As for natives, I don't know, I think they still go to traditional healers, but also very rapidly adopt 'western lifestyle'. I'm sure 'western' medicine is not an exception from this trend. Ayahuasca still seems to be deeply ingrained in their culture and original religion (which is a sort of spiritual pantheism for the lack of a better term), it is considered holly plant and still deeply revered and respected. Personally, I would not like to see this tradition they have preserved for millennia to disappear or completely mutates into something like "Ayahuasca turism"...

[dang]

Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents. That argument leads nowhere new and therefore nowhere interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: whoops I misread that one and broke the site rules in the process. Sorry and carry on!

[borski]

dang, apologies, but the parent didn't seem to be taking this on a generic tangent. The OP has a very interesting anecdotal story to tell, related directly to a group of people that take ayahuasca for healing, and I, too, am curious about how it worked for them, specifically.

[dang]

Uh oh, on a proper reading I see that you're right. Thanks for pointing it out.

I overhastily ascribed the comment to the "western medicine, you mean real medicine?" meme that doesn't belong here. Perils of pattern-matching. Retracted!