What is ayahuasca? Contributed by Aoi GarasuBy this method, it seems possible to affect the patient's mind strongly enough to treat depression, PTSD, and the like. The shaman may change the leaf variety as well as the dose depending on the patient's pathology. While it secretly holds an enormous potential to destroy the blockages generated by the modern society, the current applications are too sophisticated for them to become mainstream.
"Ayahuasca, pirate edition" like they do it in the west, made from ingredients that were the easiest to import such as the one that Marisa has prepared is an unregulated and a dangerous way to take it.
Because of its potency and propensity to cause nausea it never got popular and instead got superseded by other, more recreational drugs and thus, fallen into obscurity. However, in Japan, recently there has been an initiative by a group of supporters to demystify and revive this art, albeit in a different form. There have been several successes. The brew has been used in therapeutic massages of oriental medicine to allow practitioners to clearly see the meridians of their patients. Combined with acupunctural techniques, the practitioner would be able to discover weakened parts of the body by the geometric patterns they give off and treat them right away.
Also, applications such as training of bodily awareness in pro athletes, the healing of mental trauma, the visualization of martial arts techniques, meditation and accelerated learning enhancements for the practitioners of the above, musical and visual work production enhancement; are slowly beginning to emerge in various fields.
That said, ayahuasca still can cause harm. Inner journey is always an intense experience. If one carelessly forgets to give it respect...In Quechua language, it means “vine of the soul”. There are also cases when it is described as a herbal concoction made by boiling together the crawling plant Banisteriopsis caapi of the Malpighiaceae family and the leaves of the Psychotria viridis of the Rubiaceae family. However, fundamentally, it is a system of spirit healing that has been relayed from generation to generation of the Shipibo people living in Amazon wetlands. The active ingredient is DMT(Dimethyltryptamine), which is abundant in the natural world and even can be found being secreted in the human brain. Since the human body naturally has enzymes that break down DMT, the vine is brewed together with plants containing alkaloids such as harmine that inhibit those enzymes. Upon imbibing the brew, the sounds the user hears as well as subtle bodily sensations that had up until then been ignored will start to be misinterpreted by the brain as visual information. When people recognized the initial complex psychedelic patterns as hallucinations, the first people to experience this phenomenon called ayahuasca “the world's strongest hallucinogen”.
An accompanying shaman drinks the brew as well and converts the current state of the patient's spiritual health into colorful geometrical patterns, which he then analyzes. He then uses the information thus divined to sing a healing song called an icaro tailored to the needs of the patient’s situation.
