A "what to expect" guide for first-time ayahuasca users paired with accounts from the author's extensive shamanic experiences in the Amazon
Describes how to prepare for the first ceremony, what to do in the days afterward, and how to maintain a shamanic healing diet
Details some of the author's own ayahuasca experiences, including an intensive trip in 2009 when he underwent 17 ceremonies
Explores the many other plants that are part of the ayahuasca healer's medicine cabinet as well as the icaros, healing songs, of the ayahuasca shaman
Since 1999 Jan Kounen has regularly traveled to the Peruvian Amazon to participate in ayahuasca ceremonies. At first only a curious filmmaker, over multiple trips he transformed from explorer to apprentice to ayahuasquero and often found himself surrounded by other foreigners coming to the jungle for their first taste of ayahuasca medicine. Knowing how little guidance is available on how to prepare or what to expect, he naturally offered them advice.
Part visionary ayahuasca memoir and part practical guide, this book contains the same step-by-step advice that Kounen provides first-time ayahuasca users in the jungle. He describes how to prepare for the first ceremony and what to do in the days afterward. He explores how to deal with the nausea and details the special preparatory diets an ayahuasca shaman will put you on, often lasting for months but necessary for life-transforming results and teachings from the plant spirits. He also explains how it is far easier to maintain these restrictions in the jungle than in the city.