Showing posts from January, 2019

Hi guys!

First of all… I never want to go this long without writing a blog post again! These last few months off have been so healing to me on a deeply cellular level, and I can’t even tell you how much I’ve needed the downtime to clear my head, rest, heal, and just BE.

But now that I am slowly starting to come back to life and I am feeling some real human energy coursing through my veins for the first time in a YEAR & A HALF… I can feel the inspiration striking again, and I know that there are going to be a lot of blog posts to come to unravel the last few months with you guys.

I have discovered so many healing modalities in the last few months, and I feel like in many ways I have finally come up with my perfect (or nearly perfect… it will always be improving/changing) formula in order for my body to heal.

Of course everyone is at a different stage in not only their health journeys but in their journeys of LIFE, so I encourage you to read what I am sharing here & take it with a grain of salt. Apply the parts of it to your life that resonate with you, and absorb the rest like an interesting story. If we all took in what every blogger was doing for their health & felt the need to apply every bit of it to our lives… we’d be swimming in a sea of confusion and nothing would have the chance to stick.

Healing is simple, really. I mean it’s so complicated at the same time but when you really boil it down and get clear on what you need… it becomes simple. That is one thing I learned during my ayahuasca journey. Which brings me to… MY AYAHUASCA JOURNEY!

I will dive into all of the other healing modalities with you guys in the next few weeks. I plan to blog pretty consistently from here on out so you can expect to hear it ALL! From colonics to getting my very own infrared sauna to coffee enemas to bodywork at the Human Garage to acupuncture and cupping to the antibiotic IVs that finally seem to be saving my life — I will spill all the deets. (Feel free to ask questions in the comments below so I can be sure to incorporate them into the posts.)

BUT FIRST !! TODAY IS ABOUT AYA !! AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO EXCITED TO SHARE SOMETHING !! Let’s get into it.

My Ayahuasca Journey…!

Some initial info //

First of all, I should start by saying I was unsure how much of this I would share on the blog & podcast because my ayahuasca journey was deeply personal and intimate on so many levels. For once in my life I have decided to keep some things to myself, like the group that I did it with and the leader who facilitated the ceremony.

I am not keeping it to myself because I don’t want you guys to know, but for a few reasons. For one, I plan to go back & do it with this group many, many times! And there is a certain magic to going off into the wilderness with strangers (who become like family) and letting yourself go COMPLETELY. I reached realms & universes I had never even begun to imagine on this physical plane, and I am not sure my conscious mind would have allowed me to go so deep if I was surrounded by people who I know and/or our amazing TBB community. There is a certain element of *awareness* we hold onto when we are surrounded by people we know in this human life… and letting that go for a whole weekend was HUGE for me.

Secondly, holding ayahuasca ceremonies in California is not currently legal. Ayahuasca is a plant medicine, specifically a tropical vine native to the Amazon region, and has been used by Amazonian tribes for many thousands of years for deep healing, exploration of the soul, and mind expansion. It is by no means a recreational drug, but it goes DEEP and I see that it is not for everyone. That said, there are some amazing people out there working hard to get ayahuasca legalized in the state of California which would be absolutely WONDERFUL for the healers who have dedicated their lives to holding ceremonies & healing people.

And a quick disclaimer for those reading !! Since I am not sharing the name of the particular ceremony leader or group I did my ceremony with, I want to at least be sure to say that if you’re interested in trying ayahuasca and doing a sacred ceremony, do plenty of research on who you do it with beforehand. I can only hope that most healers out there holding ceremonies are full of integrity and know exactly what they’re doing, but I have heard that is not always the case. Since this particular plant medicine takes you incredibly deep into your own mind (& into the dark night of your soul to be honest), to the point that you pretty much lose all control and awareness of your physical body, it is so, so, SO important to be with someone well trained who can take care of you on all physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental levels.

My incredible journey into my Soul //

Ok!! Now that we’ve laid that all out, let’s get into it.

I had been thinking about doing ayahuasca for about two years, and had been told by a lot of different people (mostly my readers who had thought of me while doing Aya which was so cool) that the medicine would be very healing to me in figuring out my soul’s purpose and answering the WHY of being so sick with Lyme.

After sitting in ceremony & experiencing the medicine for myself, I quickly learned that Aya speaks to those of us who are ready to work with her. When she wants to work through you (yes, I’m calling her “she” — bear with me! She is a sacred plant medicine who I now view as a grandmother figure, you’ll see ;)), she finds a way to whisper into your ear. Whether it be through you hearing about it consistently, thinking about it out of the blue, stumbling upon a documentary all about it, watching the Chelsea Handler special on Netflix and being intrigued, or all of the above.

Speaking of Chelsea Handler… my experience was nothing like hers, just so you know. It just goes to show no two people will ever have even a remotely similar experience on the medicine. But I did cozy up & watch her show beforehand to help prepare & get in the mindset!

So let’s back up a bit.

For about two years I obsessively thought about & planned my ayahuasca journey. I was so sick until very recently that I don’t think the last few years would have been a good time for me to do it, or to travel in general, so the timing of this retreat landed perfectly. I found this ceremony leader by asking a trusted friend of mine who lived in Peru for many years who she recommended, and boom. She shared his name, this retreat was happening, I signed up. Everything happens for a reason.

My Rocky Arrival //

So flash forward to January 11th. I drove up to Northern California to meet the group, all total strangers to me, and my heart was pounding out of my chest. I was asking myself, “Why am I doing this?” “What the hell has gotten into me?” “Is Lyme disease making me crazy?” “Why the hell would I come here alone?” “Oh shit, is my car completely stuck in the mud?”

Yes. The answer was yes to the car in the mud part, lol. After getting majorly turned around, driving for 7 hours, and finally making my way down the winding mud path that lead to our campsite, I managed to get Jonathan’s car completely stuck in the mud. Upon my arrival this required 7 guys from the ceremony group to come out and push my car while another guy drove it in neutral until it was out of the mud and moving. I was choking back tears and still thinking… “WHAT. AM. I. DOING. HERE!! I am an LA girl who hates camping and now I am alone in the wilderness about to do hallucinagenic drugs with strangers.”

^ My monkey mind making its appearance. Which, for the record, is natural when you’re about to embark on a massive soul exploration journey. Our human selves are so not used to this!! It is terrifying to us!!

Quite the entrance, and even then I could feel that my journey into the ceremony was difficult for a reason… ayahuasca was already working through me, showing me that my road to getting there was a challenge, i.e. the last several YEARS have been an uphill battle and I had finally arrived at something that was going to shake up my life in a huge way.

The first thing I did after getting my car situation squared away was meet with one of the ceremony leader’s helpers to tell him about my intentions for being there. When I sat down with him (Jim, bless his heart, I love him so much now that I know him) I immediately burst into tears. I was crying not because of being so sick & struggling so terribly with Lyme for these last couple of years, but because I was radically overwhelmed & was second-guessing my being there big time.

He helped calm me down & assured me that this medicine would do its job, that my eyes would be opened and I would be transformed. I quickly added, “I also feel like I’m psychic and I have no idea what to do about it.” And he just smiled and said this medicine would surely help.

Now Time for the Ceremony!!! //

As evening came, we spent some time preparing our yurts (one for women, one for men) and then made our cozy spots with blankets & pillows in the ceremony yurt for our first night’s ceremony.

Our retreat leader taught us all about Aya, the history of the plant, what to expect, the effects we may feel, and to ask for help when we needed it. He also told us the first night would be a very gentle introduction which I was bummed about because I like to go DEEP (I am extreme, you guys know this) but I had nothing to worry about because I absolutely did go extremely deep…

He reminded us to focus on an intention. It’s important to go into an ayahuasca ceremony with a strong intention in mind, since the medicine will take your mind in so many different directions. If you ask the medicine to help you with something specific, she will guide you there.

I had a lot of intentions, but my simplest one was to HEAL, and to find answers for why I have gotten so sick. What is my soul’s purpose in this life? I know getting Lyme & having my entire life ripped away from me in many ways happened for a huge reason, and I wanted to know what that was!

To make a long story short… at 7:30pm we had our first serving of Aya which is a brewed tea of the ayahuasca vine, and it tastes kind of like earthy, muddy, berry tea. Most people think it tastes terrible… myself included! Except for my very first sip, which tasted good to me. I think I was just really hungry! Part of our preparation was not to eat past 2:30pm that day.

We all laid there, with buckets next to us because ayahuasca does make a lot of people purge, and waited for it to hit us. Our leader and his helpers played beautiful live music as we slowly drifted into our minds.

Pretty soon after our first serving some people around me were starting to feel it. Some people were crying, some were purging, and others were starting to walk around and shift into new places to lay or sit to get more comfortable. At that time, I felt nothing! I kept thinking… am I immune to this? Am I going to have a super high tolerance to this like I do with a lot of other things?

So when he came around with the second serving, I wasn’t messing around! I tipped it back and just a few minutes later I started to feel everything.

The first places my mind went were this: one, I saw the faces of two of my high school teachers turn into reptiles (lol), and then started to imagine everyone in my life as some sort of mystical being or part of the earth. Angels, fairies, mermaids, trees (yes, trees!!), reptiles, dinosaurs, dragons, goddesses, felines, elves, butterflies… it was a trip. When I opened my eyes, everyone around me looked like one of those mystical beings OR their faces were melted off entirely. It could have easily terrified me to see those melting faces, but instead I embraced where the medicine was taking me and thanked it for opening my eyes and working its magic and wisdom through me.

Then I went on a DEEPLY personal journey through the history of my family. All four of my grandparents (who have all passed away) waited at the entrance of a garden to greet me, and held out their hands to guide me. My paternal grandmother showed me the deep pain she felt in her life time, and she asked me to feel it deeply in my body so that I could understand.

She sent that pain down into my gut, and it worked through my heart until I could feel it so, so entirely as if it was my own. She showed me how I have taken on her pain in the form of physical sickness, and that she doesn’t want to burden me with it any longer. She showed me that her pain also wasn’t her own — it came from many, many generations of mothers and grandmothers before her — she showed me our ENTIRE lineage — and it was one of deep, soul-aching pain.

She showed me how many people in my family have taken on that pain in different ways. I happened to take it on in a very physical way, where it manifested as physical illness. But also it manifested in me so very deeply because I was the one who chose to come to this life to HEAL our lineage and reverse her pain. To heal her, and all of the women before her, so that I can heal & also so that my children & future generations in my family will not carry this pain.

HEAVY, right?!?!

Thank goodness my Papa also showed up (her husband) to tell me that I also have his spirit inside of me, which is an extremely light, happy, and basically untouchable spirit. We turn every life experience into a happy life. He laughed and laughed and told me that we are lucky and he made sure to instill those traits in me.

Then my grandma and I went on a beautiful journey together. I would love to describe it all, I would like to put it on a book one day. I can see it all so clearly. It felt as if we spent YEARS together… healing her, healing me, healing our family. The entire journey in human time took about 5 hours, but I swear where I was… years.

Time didn’t exist where I was. I felt that I was my soul completely disconnected from my human body. I saw where my soul lives. It is a beautiful place full of shapes and colors and music notes where everyone can fly and dip and twirl and where my soul lives forever. My soul chose to come into this human body and experience these things. All of this pain and sickness. To heal myself and future generations and to really be a voice and beacon to a community of like-minded, high vibrational beings (YOU GUYS).

What I saw is that the world is changing. Old paradigms are shifting. Veils are lifting and children are coming into this world as light workers, remembering where their souls came from. That kind of stuff is SCARY to a lot of humans on this earth right now… and the earth is going through major shifts. The state of the world is in peril, but it will all change. So many light workers and souls from other realms are choosing to incarnate on earth to SHIFT THINGS, talk about this stuff, and make the world a better place. A place full of love and connection and healing.

It was beautiful to see what my soul came here to do, what gifts I brought into this world. All doubt I had about my purpose in this life faded away. Everything that bothers me and scares me… ways I felt I was drifting from certain people in my life, etc. ALL JUST MADE SENSE. I was shown a clear formula and path to remedy those relationships and to feel really good and secure in all of my friendships, with my family, all of it.

SO THAT WAS THE FIRST NIGHT IN A NUT SHELL !!!! LIFE CHANGING STUFF !!!

My terrifying exorcism + the biggest healing of my life //

So my first night was pretty rosy. Yes, some extremely heavy stuff happened and I was kind of freaked out about what I saw about the world (humans wrecking the earth, the earth showing me that humans won’t be around forever, that kind of stuff) but I was also feeling very pleased with how happy my soul’s individual world seemed to be.

By the second night we still had the medicine in our systems from the day before, so after our first serving we immediately went deep.

I was in a pretty deep place for about an hour and a half after the first serving. I was kind of in a place similar to the “Upside Down” if you’ve ever seen the show Stranger Things. So it wasn’t a happy, light-filled place at all but it also wasn’t the worst thing in the world. I felt like I was watching my life play out above me, from under the earth, and I could literally see myself walking around my home with Hudson & Jonathan but I couldn’t reach them.

Then came the second serving. The ceremony leader knelt next to me and offered the second serving… I said, “WHAT?” Because at that point I was so out of my body I was barely able to communicate as a human anymore.

He laughed a little and said, “Would you like a second serving of the medicine?”

So I took the second serving, and that, my friends, is when I experienced the absolute dark night of my soul.

I honestly don’t even know how to share this in words. If you want a more detailed description, listen to today’s episode of the Soul on Fire Podcast, but I will also do my best to write it down.

Earlier in the night I had been looking around and feeling bad for the people around me going through a difficult journey. I felt like my soul’s world was so happy and light, and that I had no demons to deal with. I even said outside to some of the other women when I was walking to the bathroom, “I have no demons!!! It’s so great!!!”

Yes, I was being a cocky mofo. It came back to bite me in the ass.

Once the second serving hit me, I went through a wave of EXTREME nausea. I am talking so severe it felt like a fever spiked extremely high and I started pouring sweat. My clothes were sticking to me because I was so hot and sweaty, and I started heaving. I also felt like I had swallowed my own hair (very possible because I was so out of body) which is one of my worst human fears in life. Just a massive hair phobia.

It felt like the walls were closing in on me and I was being slapped in the face by harsh colors and loud sounds. On ayahuasca, you experience sensations differently… so it is possible to be slapped by colors and sounds!! I hoisted myself up (hardest thing to do ever when you feel extremely detached from your body) and walked to the bathroom, knowing I was going to throw up or my body was going to purge in every way.

One of the helpers was standing outside & asked me if I needed help. I said no and pushed him away… I was so petrified I knew I couldn’t explain myself and just wanted this feeling to pass.

I went into a stall and that’s when it REALLY hit me. I was in a demonic hell. Hearing shrill demonic laughter and my body was rocking and convulsing like I was in the middle of a seizure. I let out a few screams and the WORST of thoughts went through my mind. Everything from “I’m going to die,” to “Everyone who told me not to do this was right,” to “This is never going to end and I am so fucking screwed.”

After a little bit of that, I threw up a LOT…. and my body started to calm down. My body temp went back down and I felt like maybe I was reaching a more normal, manageable place.

Oh boy was I wrong.

The helper had waited for me outside and walked me back to the yurt. I laid down in my spot and quickly was sucked back under by another wave.

This time was about 293829382 times worse and more demonic than the first wave. I was stuck in a realm where I believed I had been trapped there for LIFETIMES and that everyone there was lying to me and my entire life was a trap to just get me to come to this place.

The music was again slapping me in the face. I felt like the music was screaming at me and telling me everything I ever thought I knew about my life was a lie. Then I went into a massive. screaming. episode.

You hear about those people in a group plant medicine journey who just start shrieking and screaming and thrashing and having a full blown exorcism right there in front of everyone?

That was me.

I was screaming at the top of my lungs about tons of things in my life. To everyone around me those things made little sense, but looking back I have been able to piece them tougher and they make A TON of sense.

Mostly I was screaming bloody murder for HUDSON & JONATHAN!!!!! Mostly Hudson if we’re being totally honest. I was PETRIFIED in this mental state that I would never, ever get to see him or be with him again. (Hudson is my cat for any new readers!!)

I was also trying to prove to the leader and helpers and the other people there that I remembered my human life and they couldn’t take that away from me (since I believed they were trying to).

I even screamed “ORANGETHEORY!!!” which is where Jonathan works (lol), just to prove that I remembered my life and what my fiancé does for work.

More cathartically, I yelled at people I had extreme anger toward and I could literally SEE their faces. I also yelled out things that had been intentions from the rest of the group without my knowing, so my body had literally become a conduit for other people’s pain to go through me and then be RELEASED forever.

I could go on & on, because I feel I was there screaming and thrashing for generations. Truly. Where I was, that’s how it felt. I also pulled a marble (I believed) out of my throat and was screaming that I FOUND MY VOICE!!!!! And I swear you guys…. my voice is so much stronger now. It was quite weak and tired with Lyme, and now it is feeling much, much stronger and more me. HOW WILD!!

The Aftermath of the Exorcism Experience //

As I came down from my screaming fit (which lasted about 30 minutes in human time), I realized what I had been doing. And I felt terrible!!! I wasn’t sure how much I had disturbed everyone and what I had said.

But as the ceremony ended, the group came up to me and the response was overwhelmingly positive. They surrounded me with love and healing light and told me that they had been sending me healing energy. After all, we were all there to heal and explore our minds and I had been on a DAMN deep journey doing exactly that.

And from there, I felt extremely light. I couldn’t believe it. I felt…. HEALED. Full of energy. Pain in my body GONE.

It was like I had released those lifetimes and generations of pain that my ancestors had shown me on the first night.

And then I realized…. maybe everything in my life was guiding me to this moment like the medicine showed me, but not in a bad way. In a very, very good way.

Almost like my soul decided I was going to come here, it was going to open me up to spirituality through yoga and through all of the incredible people I have met on my podcast over the years… and then I was going to get to have this wildly healing experience.

IT WAS WILD. And because my experience was so LOUD… I got to hear all of what I had said from various people for the next few days. That was special too in its own way, although in my conscious mind I normally would have felt VERY exposed. Rather than feeling exposed or shameful, I felt…. free. Like I had finally shown my TRUE SELF…. dark freaking parts of my soul and all, and I was loved for it. I wasn’t chastised. I wasn’t shamed. I was loved and supported.

I GREATLY credit my group for this. All of the organizers and the 17ish people who were journeying with me. Each and every one of them handled the situation with immense grace and love. And because of them, it was a HEALING experience rather than a traumatizing one. I cannot thank them enough.

Day 3!!!!

After that, I honestly decided to have only a few drops of Aya on Day 3. It was perfect because it put me into a good headspace of writing and being able to share my experience through poetry and coming back into my body, then we danced and had a great time. It was so light for me by then because I felt like I had done enough heavy, intense healing work for that particular trip.

And now… two weeks later, I still feel the benefits running through me. I feel drastically changed. I look at the world differently, I LOVE people more, I see that we are ALL ONE. I saw that my Soul’s purpose on this earth is to love, to be a beacon of light, and to be in love and be seen. I saw that I have this amazing platform FOR A REASON… and I actually got to have pride and joy about what I have built vs. being stuck in my human mind of often feeling like I am “not enough.”

Why do we feel that way!?!?! We are ALL enough. We are EXACTLY where we are meant to be. We are one.

I also saw so so so much more… so I need to write more posts. I saw that I have the ability and the power to heal myself. I saw that through visualization and BELIEVING something to be true, we can believe it into happening. That is the art of manifestation.

I can honestly say that hands down Ayahuasca has healed me more deeply than anything else I have done up until this point. All of my Lyme treatments and other healing modalities are now working deeper through me and I feel them actually doing their job, because I cleared my blocks through Aya.

I plan to do it many more times, and will be embarking on a Micro Dosing program. starting at the end of February.

I will be sharing a LOT MORE very soon!!!! This only scratches the very surface!!! Do check out today’s podcast episode, and I will be sharing more soon with an Ayahuasca expert on the pod.

Leave any questions below, and I would love to hear about your Aya journeys as well!!!!! ALL OF MY LOVE!!

Souls Wrapped in Skin- Reintroducing New Foods, Dealing with IBS, & Listening to My Body!

Hello, beautiful friends! Thank you for all of the love on the new site layout — I am so overjoyed about it. I cannot even handle how much I feel it represents my heart and soul now, and the direction that my brand is moving. If ya couldn’t tell from the branding, I feel the brand (and myself!) moving in a very spiritual, ethereal, calming / zen vibes, soul-level-depth kind of direction. Quite a far cry from the vegan food blog I started in 2013! (But always love that too.) Speaking of vegan food blogs… my journey with food has been such a, well, JOURNEY over the years. Being plant-based again has drastically helped to improve my health issues over the last few years as I have been dealing with Lyme, co-infections, mold, parasites, hormone issues, and more. In fact, I even came up with the term intuitively plant-based (I am sure I did not invent it lol- but have been calling myself that for a while now) and have been following that for the last couple of years. Although I shied awa...