Meditation and Plant Medicine Ceremonies: How Meditation Helps

Meditation and Plant Medicine Ceremonies: How Meditation Helps

by | Oct 4, 2023 | plant medicine ceremonies, spiritual practices

Did you know that meditation and medicine have the same root word? Despite meditation and plant medicine often being seen as separate modalities, they complement each other well. So well, in fact, that meditation can help in plant medicine ceremonies in many different ways.

It is estimated that over 275 million people have some form of meditation practice around the world, and more people than ever are feeling called to explore their inner world with the assistance of master plant teachers, such as Ayahuasca and San Pedro. So, what happens when you combine these ancient technologies in a plant medicine ceremony?

Here are some of the ways meditation helps in plant medicine ceremonies.

1. Preparation 

The benefits of meditation begin before you attend a plant medicine ceremony. It is often recommended to take steps to prepare your body, mind, and spirit to sit with plant medicine, including adjusting your diet, slowing down activity, and trying practices such as meditation. Preparatory steps are not limitations but ways to purify so you can have more profound experiences in ceremonies and begin to connect with the master plants in advance. 

Meditation is an ancient practice that, like plant medicines, has gained the scientific world’s attention. Recently, there has been a lot of research to confirm meditation’s many benefits, such as improving focus, reducing stress, and even changing brain structures. One study found meditation helped increase the thickness of the hippocampus- which is the part of your brain responsible for emotional regulation and memory.

So, all these benefits will begin to help during your plant medicine preparation time, allowing you to shed layers and make space to connect with the plant medicines. Meditation can also help ground and calm the mind before your plant medicine ceremony. It is also natural to experience some nerves before a ceremony, which meditation can help settle.

2. Observe Without Judgement

One of the main ways meditation helps in plant medicine ceremonies is to help you stay as the observer of your experience. You can notice your thoughts without getting swept into their emotional storm or judging them. Instead, you have meditation tools that can bring your attention back to your center.

Master plant teachers such as Ayahuasca are medicine. So, while ceremonial experiences are unique to the individual, it is common for there to be ups and downs as part of your journey to your center.  For example, plant medicines such as Ayahuasca can magnify thought patterns, emotions, and experiences to make you recognize them. Meditation can help you navigate and even welcome these experiences to dive deeper into your inner world without resistance. 

3. Focus and Center

Meditation and plant medicine both allow you to explore your inner being. Meditation can help you re-center, helping you come back to your intention for the ceremony, quieten the mind,  and maintain your heart-mind connection.

Having the tools to quieten the mind and separate yourself from thoughts is empowering. In a plant medicine ceremony, this empowerment can help you stay focused and go deep into your inner being with the help of the master plant.

4. A Physical Aid

Meditation can help increase your self-awareness, so in a ceremony, you remember to come back to the breath or do a body scan to make a simple adjustment to feel physically comfortable once more. 

Our Ayllu Medicina yoga teacher often reminds participants that deep breathing can completely transform a challenging moment. Sometimes, remembering to take a deep breath, check in with our body, and relax any areas of tension can help uncomfortable moments of the plant medicine ceremony pass.

5. Let Go

A common piece of advice people give for plant medicine ceremonies is to ‘let go’ or ‘surrender.’ This may feel easier said than done! After all, what does surrender mean? 

For many people, the art of surrender can be a mystery before a plant medicine ceremony, and it remains a practice that meditation helps strengthen. Essentially, this piece of advice refers to allowing the present moment to be exactly how it is. It means acknowledging any difficult experiences or emotions but relaxing into them with trust, trusting the master plant and yourself. 

Meditation also helps remind you that the moment will pass; everything is temporary. The practice enables you to return to the present moment. It can help you let go of expectations and recognize when the ego is trying to take control. 

You can begin to stop trying to push or pull your inner and outer experience during the ceremony, instead surrendering into the present. The result? Fewer obstacles and more collaboration with the master plant teacher.

6. Gratitude 

A great intention for a plant medicine ceremony is gratitude. Meditation can help you stay centered in these feelings of gratitude, love, and humility. It can help allow your true self to bloom by getting out of your own way. 

Plant medicines such as Ayahuasca can also produce transcendental states, where you go beyond the ego and experience the connection to what is bigger than yourself, often referred to as ‘oneness’ or wholeness. A strong meditation practice can also achieve these heightened states of awareness. 

However, suppose you are beginning your meditation practice. In that case, plant medicines can help you reach deeper states of meditation and the feelings associated, such as peace, joy,  and a quietening of the mind.

7. Integration

Meditation and plant medicine work well together before, during, and after a ceremony. Meditation can also help during integration, the time after the ceremony, and when you finish a plant medicine retreat. Integration can only happen if we make space for it with compassion and patience for ourselves. 

Returning to the ceremony of life can be an adjustment, which means having tools such as meditation can help you navigate the integration period with openness, attention, and space. Meditation can be the practice you continually use to maintain your well-being, quieten the mind, check in with your inner world, and stay centered, no matter what distractions or challenges arise.

Attend Our Meditation and Plant Medicine Retreat

Meditation and plant medicine share many similarities, which means meditation is a practice that can help during plant medicine preparation, plant medicine ceremonies, and integration periods. There are a range of different meditation practices to try, so you can find one that suits your own needs.

Do you want support deepening your meditation practice and connecting to master plant teachers? Ayllu Medicina is holding a Meditation and Plant Medicine Retreat in November 2023. While meditation is always a core part of our plant medicine retreats in Ecuador, this retreat is specifically focused on providing meditation tools and practices.

It will be a transformational week that provides the space, practices, and support to dive deep into your inner world. Do you have some questions? Our team will be happy to schedule a call to discuss any of our retreats in more detail! 


meditation and plant medicine

 

 

New Moon Offerings

New Moon Offerings

by | Dec 30, 2020 | plant medicine ceremonies, spiritual practices, Uncategorized

It is New Moon, the sky is dark and full of stars. A time for renewal and reconnection to ourselves and our source, the new moon reminds me to pause and give thanks.

I walk out to the small palm tree on the path to the garden and dig a small hole, singing about the love and abundance that surrounds me. Prepared with me is an offering of food and treasures I prepared throughout the day – toasted corn, plantain, a chocolate bar, eggs, a beautiful crystal found on the beach, earrings made from seeds, dried tobacco leaves, palo santo, a few coins, and essential oils. As I offer this heap of abundance to the small hole for Mother Earth, I pray with gratitude for all that she has offered me this past month. I thank her for the sunshine, the waves in the sea, the lush soil nourishing our vegetables, the fruit trees blossoming with guayaba, the vast skies, and include some prayers for what I would like to bring to my life in the coming weeks.

We hold sacred this practice of nurturing and acknowledging our Mother Earth, especially during the New Moon. This includes giving an offering to the tierra, the Earth, to sustain that familiar and love connection that we have with the Earth as a live being. The ritual is renewing for the Earth and for us. The idea is that we must help keep her alive, so we feed her and this connection between us. We open a wound, literally a hole in the ground, trying to always use the same one each month.

Maybe you are wondering, what could we possibly offer the Earth that she does not already have? Again, the idea is to bring her life and sustain our connection, so the act is as much symbolic as it is literal.

We save food from each meal that day, and also give her a bit of everything we have eaten during the month. The idea is not to give things you do not need anymore – the end of the candy jar, the last bit of leftovers, or the necklace you don’t wear anymore. Rather, it is important to offer things that have true worth for you, and even things you have been working with the whole month. The offering is like a summary of what we are grateful for from the past month. All of this we want to share with and give to Mother Earth.

For example, sometimes I even include in my offering Vitamin C or a certain type of tea that I have been using that month.

The Earth does everything that is in her power to keep us alive, so in turn, this is our way of nurturing this connection and showing our gratitude.

Indigenous people all around the world have been following the moon calendar since their existence, and also follow this ritual. New Moon is the time for planting and planning, and Full Moon is for harvesting.

We align with this by praying and giving on the New Moon. We give voice to what we want ot thank the Earth for, as well as what we want to receive in the weeks that follow. By giving and praying in this way, we can receive with humility and gratitude throughout the rest of the month.

During the Full Moon, we continue the offering, by giving liquid, milk, or plant medicine, to keep this offering of gratitude alive.

More on the Full Moon soon. For now, it is New Moon, and we are singing:

“Mother Earth, dear Mother Earth, we are here, we are here, hear our cry.”

Opening with Temazcal

Opening with Temazcal

by | Aug 11, 2020 | plant medicine ceremonies, Uncategorized

Our retreats with Ayllu Medicina always begin with a Temezcal, or a sweat lodge. For me, it is a time to sweat out what is stuck, and reconnect with my inner self and intention.

After weeks or months of anticipation, traveling for several hours, and finally arriving to the space of a retreat, it is of course normal to feel excitement, relief, and nerves.  We are carrying energies and thought-patterns from our “everyday life” that do not just float away on the airplane. To mark the official arrival to the space, we will begin every retreat with a temazcal, or sweat lodge.  Seated around a fire, you will begin connecting with the element and your purpose to start your process of deep inner work and transformation. 

We then enter the sweat lodge. Led by our experienced guides, this is a chance to experience a rebirth brought upon purely by your intention and attention as you focus on praying, singing, and appreciating the elements of Mother Earth. 

The sweat lodge is one of the oldest ceremonies that exist, also known as the Ceremony of Origin. It is a profound experience of rebirth in the womb of our Mother Earth. As an ancestral ceremony of the Native American Tradition, their cosmovision says that this ceremony is a way to recreate the creation of Life. 

When I enter a  sweat lodge, crawling on the ground and sitting up right, legs folded, waiting for the heat to begin, I breathe with the knowledge that these moments of prayer and release are here to remind me of my connection to the Earth, her elements, and my ancestors which are now a part of the Earth. 

The sweat lodge is in a circular space located in the East, which represents the maternal womb, and is covered by canvas until it is completely dark. In the West is the fire, which represents the Sun and its creative power. Volcanic stones are heated in the fire until they are completely fiery red. Once these ancient stones are ready, they are placed in a hole in the sweat lodge. Then we close the door, beginning an experience where we connect intimately with our inner being through the darkness of the space and heat of the old stones. The movement of our energies begins through prayer, intentions, native songs and silence. There are four rounds, each one in honor of the 4 elements of life: body (earth), heart (water), mind (fire), and spirit (wind), taking us to soul spaces where we experience the understanding of being part of an indivisible whole. 

Returning to this womb of Mother Earth makes it possible to recreate our impressions and projections on the world, consciously modifying our original codes. 

For me,  this ceremony is my form of church. It reminds me that we are all a part of Nature and that our life has a purpose, from which we must take responsibility. It is a deeply spiritual way to move unwanted stress, body-aches- release toxins from body and generate vitality.

The only way to begin a true retreat and transformation.