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This podcast is all about the journey. The journey of self-discovery, the journey to reach our highest potential and the journey to understand the nature of reality.
Podcast host Garett Renon is currently studying shipibo style plant medicine and is an apprentice under world renown shipibo curandero and ayahuasquero Ricardo Amaringo. Garett brings a unique perspective and insight into the world of shipibo style plant medicine documenting his year long sama with the powerful master tree ayahuma.
Join Garett on his journey as he discusses: The power and potential of Plant medicine, Human potential, The power of the mind, The nature of consciousness, Supernatural phenomena and much more.
Welcome to the deeper you go, the wearer it gets. I'm your host, Garett Renon. So in this episode, you'll hear the live recording of a talk I gave at the Circle Psychedelic Fair in Seattle, Washington on 11/01/2025. The talk is titled The Sacred Power of Unlocking the Wisdom of Shipibo Healing Traditions. In this talk, I share how Ayahuasca and other plant spirits can serve as profound teachers guiding our healing, restoring energetic balance, and reconnecting us to spirit.
Garett:You can also watch this talk on my YouTube channel if you would like to see the visuals, but I'll tell you it's not necessary. The message and energy come through clearly here in the audio. And I wanna say that this talk went incredibly well, and I'm very proud to share it with you. So if you know someone who is curious about Ayahuasca or the Shipibo traditions, this is the perfect episode to share. But before we get into it, I wanna thank you all for listening to the show.
Garett:I also want to let you know that the show runs on your support. So if you're enjoying and want to support the show, please share it with a friend, and make sure you subscribe and leave a review. A few other ways to support are you can get some podcast gear. You can sign up for my newsletter to know all about what I have going on. You can also get a copy of the unplugged journal, or you can get some pine pollen or a lesion tallow.
Garett:The links for all of that are on are in the show notes. Okay. So let's get on with the episode.
Garett:Alright. Well, we'll go ahead and get started. So thank you all for coming. This is a great turnout. So my name is Garrett, and I'm gonna be talking about the sacred power of plants and also the healing power of plants.
Garett:So in order to truly understand the sacred power of plants, we must first look towards nature and ask ourselves how does growth, evolution, and true transformation occur within nature? And while there are many examples, one of the most fascinating and mind blowing examples is the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. And so the way that works is the caterpillar essentially sheds its skin creating a chrysalis, which I just learned from Chat GPT. It's not
Garett:a cocoon, believe it or not.
Garett:That is for moths, apparently. So the caterpillar sheds its skin it creates a chrysalis. Inside that chrysalis its whole body completely dissolves into a chemical soup. This chemical soup is then restructured and and reorganized into the components necessary for a butterfly. And then several days later, the butterfly emerges from the cocoon.
Garett:Right? This is an extremely wild process. And what I'm realizing is that this is a perfect example of an alchemical process occurring in nature. And so, and from an alchemical standpoint, the caterpillar, if you're familiar with alchemy, the caterpillar represents lead. It represents raw potential.
Garett:And the butterfly represents gold, and it represents the manifestation and actualization of a higher state of being. And so what nature teaches us about this event is that in order for the caterpillar to transform into a butterfly, it must go through a death and rebirth process. And it must shed and burn away anything that is not in alignment with becoming a butterfly. And what I've found, and you probably don't know this, this is the same thing is true for us. See, we are all born as big piles of lead.
Garett:Right? Big piles of potential. And within that potential exist higher states and higher possibilities of who you could become all the way up to the best version of yourself. The one thing that's different between us and Caterpillars is that there is no guarantee that we will achieve our highest potential. There's no guarantee that we will become anything more than that pile of lead.
Garett:So, if we do want to become better, if we do want to step into that golden version of ourselves, we have to embark on our own alchemical journey. We have to embark on our own death and rebirth process and remove anything that is not in alignment with who we could be. And so this is how the sacred power of plants work, is they help guide us through our own alchemical journey and our own death and rebirth. And I know this from experience. So the one month after going down to the jungle in Peru and doing my first Sama or Dieta, my whole life collapsed.
Garett:I lost everything. I lost my businesses. I lost my marriage. I lost my finances. And I had to file for bankruptcy.
Garett:My whole world came burning to the ground. And while that was extremely tough to deal with, I realized that that was necessary, that I went through a death and rebirth because even though my life was fairly good, I was out of alignment with who I was supposed to become. And so the whole reason I'm here speaking to you now is because the sacred power of the plants helped kick start this journey for me. So a little bit about myself. I spent I've been fascinated with human potential and trying to become the best version of myself and helping other people do the same.
Garett:I spent many years working in the fitness industry and most importantly, I've spent nine years working with Ayahuasca in the Chupiko tradition. I've sat in over 300 ceremonies which is absolutely ridiculous and a lot. I don't recommend anyone do it but it's just kind of the way my journey ended up being. And I've done five Samas or Dayetas including a one year Sama. And I'm not going to get too much into what that is because that could be a whole talk into itself.
Garett:But just know that that is a way in the Shapevo style to further your relationship with plant spirits and it's all and it's the way you receive your training or it's also a process for deep healing. So, why do I do this work? Well, the reason, because like I said, I was fascinated with human potential and I found that Ayahuasca, particularly in the Shapebo tradition, is one of the most powerful tools I've ever seen for help for personal development and helping you step into that better version of yourself. And another thing is it helps you connect or reconnect with the natural world, with the spirit world, and even your higher self. And finally, it was a missing component in my own journey and because it was missing for me, I assumed that it was missing, it could be missing for some of you.
Garett:And by that, part of that I mean is plant medicine, but also that is a energetic or spiritual work because we kind of live and operate on three planes of consciousness, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. And I realized that up until about nine years ago, had zero spiritual or energetic work. So, I'll be talking about Ayahuasca in the Shapebo tradition. I'll be talking also about a fascinating concept called spiritual herbalism. And then we'll get into a little bit about how the death and rebirth process works.
Garett:So is there anyone here who's never heard of Ayahuasca before? Oh, wow. So I almost always have at least one person that always surprises me. Really? Wow.
Garett:I've heard the word. Okay. Well, that's awesome. So Ayahuasca is it's many things, but on on its most basic level, it's a tea. It's a psychedelic tea made with two plants.
Garett:On another level, it's
Garett:a tool. And I kind
Garett:of talked about that. It's a tool for helping you with personal development and healing and whatnot. And then on an even higher level, it's an entity. It's known as the grandmother or La Madre or what I like to think of it is it is the spirit of mother nature herself. And that's when I that's where Ayahuasca really starts to get fascinating.
Garett:So it's made with two plants, like I said. So the first plant is Jacruna. And Jacruna contains DMT, which is dimethyltryptamine. And DMT is known as the spirit molecule. But one of the fascinating things about this is well, this is maybe this is fascinating.
Garett:But so DMT is not orally active. Meaning, you can make a tea from these leaves. You could eat these leaves. You could blend them all up in a smoothie, drink them down, and nothing would happen. And the reason nothing would happen is because we have an enzyme in our gut called MAO, monoamine oxidase, which essentially destroys the DMT and prevents it from becoming crossing the blood brain barrier.
Garett:So how do you make this become orally active? Well, this is where the second component of the tea comes in. You have the Banisteria capy vine. And this is where it starts to get really interesting because the vine contains an MAOI, which is monoamine oxidase inhibitor. So the vine contains this thing that suppresses the enzyme in our gut, which then allows the DMT to become orally active.
Garett:Which now is fascinating because if you're a curious person, you might be like, how did they figure that out? Like, how does that work? This is not a coincidence that these two plants are have been combined to make something very powerful, especially when we know that Ayahuasca is thousands of years old. I believe the oldest, what we consider record of it is a thousand years and that's because they found some bag with some Ayahuasca residue on it. But I believe it's been in use for tens of thousands of years, who knows?
Garett:And so what does the mainstream narrative tell us about thousands of years ago? Well, there's no science, there's no microscopes, there's no chat GPT, right? Very primitive thousands of years ago. So the mainstream will say, well, they just trial and error, right? They were just in the jungle and they were bored and so they were just combining things.
Garett:But that is ridiculous because there are somewhere between forty and eighty thousand different plant species in the jungle. Many of them are poisonous. Not to mention, you would have to know what you were looking for. Right? You would have to know DMT existed.
Garett:You would have to know that there's an enzyme in your gut and all that kind of stuff. And so how did they do this? Well, if you ask the sheep people, for example, they will say the plants told them. And more specifically, they will say tobacco told them. And see, tobacco was a very powerful master plant.
Garett:But that actually can lead to more questions than answer. But what this really comes down to is that there's this idea of intelligence in nature. That nature is alive and nature has a spirit to it. And the spirit is talking to us all the time. And the lakes and the rivers and the rocks and the mountains and the trees, but we can no longer hear them because we are so distracted by social media and our jobs and all the things.
Garett:And so we've lost that connection. But this idea of intelligence in nature is essentially a big foundation for Shapebo style medicine. So, people heard of the Shapebo before? Okay. Cool.
Garett:So, they're a tribe in the jungles of Peru. They're about 35 to 40,000 strong. So there are many tribes that work with Ayahuasca. Now, obviously I'm biased because I've worked and trained with the Shapiro, but it seems to be the word on the street is they're highly respected. And one of the reasons it is, if you look at their traditional clothing, it's kinda hard to see here, but these are all patterns.
Garett:And what these are, is these are energetic patterns of different plants. And so their whole and different plants that they use energetically in ceremonies. So their whole, like, culture is just steeped in Ayahuasca. And in fact, obviously this is what they believe, but Ayahuasca preferred language is Shapebo. So some of the Shapebo ceremonial and medicinal practices.
Garett:So when it comes to a Shapebo style ceremony, main thing to know about this is that the purpose is for healing and growth. Right? Like, it's not about the psychedelic experience. Now, there's a good chance you will have that and there's a good chance that can be beneficial, but that's not the goal. The goal is for you to leave a better person than you arrive to be healthier, to be lighter, to be stronger, to be more grounded and more motivated to then continue on with your journey.
Garett:That is the goal of the ceremony. It's not to surf the cosmos. And one of the things that they believe is that illness is a result of essentially energetic disharmony, which actually kind of checks out if we think about it from a scientific standpoint because we know that everything an everything has an energetic signature to it. So basically, the Shapebo, in a very simplified term, could be thought of as like energetic or spiritual doctors. And the big thing that they are doing in the ceremony is they are managing energies.
Garett:They are managing energies in the room and they are managing energies within people and helping remove things that do not need to be there, bring things in that should be there and protecting and all those aspects. Very fascinating. And the main tool they use to manage the energy are their songs, their medicine songs. You might have heard the term Ikaros, the Shapiro term is Baywa. And one of the most fascinating things that Shapiro do that I'm unaware of anybody else does, obviously I don't know, and I'm talking all medicine cultures here, but I don't know all medicine cultures, I could be wrong about this.
Garett:But 95% of the songs they sing are freestyle, made up on the spot. And reason, and so most traditions will sing your medicine songs, which are awesome and powerful and effective and beautiful, but you're limited when you're singing one song, when you're kind of like, this is track seven off my new album. And the freestyle is necessary because think about energies. Right? They are well, one, we know the energy is neither created nor destroyed.
Garett:They just transform from one form to another. And then you think of energies. They flow. Right? They move.
Garett:And so the reason the Shapebo, they developed this style of freestyling because when they are working on someone, maybe someone has a broken heart or whatever, and you're working on them with that broken heart, but then maybe something else pops up. Well, I was limited in my song, then I'd have to finish up my broken heart song and then switch over to the next track. But then they can just boom, boom, boom, boom, and immediately pop over, address that other energy, come right back to the broken heart. Maybe they address something in the room and then come right back to that person. So you realize that this is the only way it should be done.
Garett:So very cool, very unique. And then another aspect is that they work with other plants in ceremony. It's not just about Ayahuasca. So that's where the term spiritual herbalism comes from. And to understand this term, you have to first I don't if anyone's ever heard as above, so below.
Garett:I'm also a big fan of the hermetic principles. So what as above, so below means is that I talked about it earlier that there's a physical realm, a mental realm, and a spiritual realm. Well, this phrase means that the same rules apply on all realms of of existence. So you think about herbalism in a physical sense. Right?
Garett:If you go if you if you make an appointment with an herbalist, you sit down with them and they're gonna ask you what's going on, what's wrong with you, why are you here? And based on the symptoms or whatever you tell them, they're gonna say okay this plant you should take this, take four drops of this plant, make a tea with this plant and whatever. Well, as above so below, what the Chiquiwa have discovered is that these plants, most medicinal plants, also have a spirit associated with them. And so just like some physical herbalist may prescribe lavender for you to help calm you in the physical world, well you can use lavender energetically, the signature of lavender to help clean and center and calm people down. So very fascinating concept.
Garett:So kind of the way this works is I like to think of Ayahuasca is the star and the container of the shell. But behind the scenes, you have all these other plants and they help doing the heavy lifting. They're helping with removing negative energies. They're bringing in love and light and they're centering, they're calming, they're also protecting. So these plants can have very protective qualities.
Garett:And so the way a practitioner develops a relationship with these other plant energies is through a process called SAMA or Dieta, which I kind of talked about earlier.
Garett:Like I said, I'm not going
Garett:to go too much into that, but those plants, this is a huge part of the Shipibo style is that these plants are there to help manage and guide big time helpers. And those people that have done it many times can start to pick up on these other plant spirits. And so here's some that I have a personal relationship with and the pictures are kind of hard to see, but they were just kind of fun things I went through with chat GPT. But the point of that is these spirits of the plants and what's cool about these plants is just like each one of us is all unique, we are all unique individuals, well, the spirits of plants are unique individuals. So some of them, for example, Marosa, which is one of my main plants, is this very feminine, heartwarming plant.
Garett:She's very good to bring in love. She's good for like a broken heart. And she's kind of like this warm hug, warm motherly, feminine spirit. Where lavender is another one I have, which is very similar to Marosa, but here's the big difference is I would say Marosa is warm, and I would say lavender is cold, not in a bad sense, but like lavender, so like, Morosa, if you're feeling really, you need a warm hug, I use Marosa on you. If you're just completely like, you need to calm down and be cooled off, well then that's when lavender would be called in.
Garett:And then tobacco, it's kind of considered one of the grandfather. Ayahuasca is the mother. Tobacco is the grandfather. And tobacco can be, it's kind of considered like the Swiss army knife and can be used for protecting, cleaning, centering, and all these things. And another one I have, and these are not all my plants, but So I did a year long Sama with this tree called Aayouma.
Garett:And Ayahuma is a awesome plant. Very strong, very masculine, very warrior spirit, very grounding, and it can kind of do everything. And so this is the basis of my medicine is this tree called Ayahuma.
Garett:So
Garett:who is an Ayahuasca ceremony good for and what are these plants good for? What can they heal? Well, the simplest way to say is they can heal anything preventing you from achieving a higher state of being, right? But they're also good for traumas. That's a very generalized term, but traumas could be abuse, mental, physical, or emotional diseases, particularly autoimmune diseases.
Garett:And I like when you kind of break down that word, because a disease really is disease. And all diseases kind of stem from a out of whack, sort of lacking of harmony, but particularly autoimmune diseases. Because if you know about those and understand what those are, those are our bodies are so dysregulated and out of harmony that the body doesn't know what to do when it's attacking itself. So these plants are really good at helping bring you back into energetic harmony. Also good for mental disorders, addictions, and then the catch all would be energetic blockages, right?
Garett:And that's just thinking of the perfect version of yourself would be pure light. I don't know if we ever get there, but what is blocking that light is dark energies. So that's kind of what they do, but how do they work and how do they heal? So you've kind of got two different things going on here. You've got the, what I call the mysterious and the mystical, and then you've got the science aspect of it.
Garett:So from the mysterious, well, first level is plant intelligence, kind of like what was talking about. And any of you that have sat with the medicine know that there is just an intelligence behind this that you can try to explain, but only people who have sat with it can truly understand what you're trying to tell them. And it's like these plants just know. Right? One of the jokes of these types of ceremonies is you don't get what you need, but you don't get what you want.
Garett:You get what you need. And that's a lot of times where that intelligence comes in. You may come in with one intention, and then a whole thing happens to you, and then you're like, what is that about? And then six months later, you're like, oh, I get it. That is smart.
Garett:So then there's just like the energetic aspect, like I was talking about where it's really about harmonizing energies. But then there's a cool part where we know that science actually has done some research and can back some of this up. So one thing, and this is not just unique to ayahuasca, this goes to a lot of different plant medicines, but what they do and what they're good for is they help you shut down your default mode network. So your default mode network is exactly what it sounds like, it's your operating system. Right?
Garett:And this is why, like, when it comes to, let's just say, healing or growing, we all know what we should be doing. Right? But a lot of times, it's not a secret that we should probably be working out, eating healthy, and starting that business that we've been putting off and all the things. And so it's like, why are we not doing it? We all know what to do.
Garett:Well, it's because our default mode network, if anyone is a fan of Joe Dispenza, he says neurons that fire together wire together. Right? But we've essentially created our operating system. It's like, even though you know you need to do this, it's hard to break out of those patterns because those neurons have just fired and wired together so tightly that you're almost stuck. And so why plant medicines can be so powerful is they temporarily shut this down.
Garett:This doesn't mean you completely lose who you are, but it gives you like an even plain field. And I like to think of it as almost like defragging of the hard drive. It kind of reorganizes everything, puts you on an even plain field, and then your brain goes into a state of neuroplasticity. This can last for days to even months afterwards. There are other ways, even things like exercise and doing new things can keep that neuroplasticity going.
Garett:So long story short, your default mode network gets shut down and then your brain goes into this state of neuroplasticity, which allows you now to form new patterns and new habits. It's like you get a a complete reset. And then so this is I'm gonna get into this here in a second because what you do after ceremony matters more than what you do in ceremony oftentimes because of this state of neuroplasticity. The ceremony gets you there. Now what are we gonna do?
Garett:Because you've got this brain that's ready to be reprogrammed. And if you just go right back into your old patterns, what do you think is gonna happen? And I actually, I was at the psychedelic conference in Denver back in June, and they were I was at a talk and they were talking about integration. And one of the things they said, made sense, never thought of before, is that if you go back into your old patterns after this, they can even rewire even stronger. So something you need to be aware of because you can, feel.
Garett:The other one and then the big things that they do is with this defragging is it gives you it helps you enhance your intuition. Right? We have two minds going on. This is the masculine and the feminine. And we've got our logical mind and we've got our intuition, our heart mind.
Garett:And most people in our society are out of balance. We're way too in our logical and we've lost touch with our intuition. But this is the intuition is where all the all the magic happens. So it helps boost up your intuition and your connection to your higher self and which is essentially giving you your power back. So this leads me into integration.
Garett:So the famous saying is Ayahuasca only works if you are willing to do work. It is extremely powerful, but like I said, if you don't do anything, maybe have a fun story to tell people and this profound thing, but they're not going to benefit from it. So, and I have a whole process, integration process that I'm putting together and working with people because this is very important. But it can be as simple as doing the things you need to do. And as simple as that one of the fascinating things with Ayahuasca that I've seen over the ten years working with it is how oftentimes people just automatically want to start doing better.
Garett:Like they're like, I don't feel like drinking anymore. I just don't want to drink. Or I really want to start eating healthy or I want to start exercising because it starts showing you who you could be. Usually that best version of yourself is this healthier version of yourself. And then also the integration helps with like what I call growing and not just healing.
Garett:Because this is very important. Our journey of stepping into our potential, we've got two things going on. First, we need to heal, right? And there's a lot of things that we need to heal from. But the healing will only take you so far.
Garett:After you've healed, now we need to grow, right? We need to start stepping in and pushing ourselves and challenging ourselves. I think of it as like if you break your arm. Well, the healing aspect is we put a cast on that arm. And then and this is actually a good example of how these ceremonies could work.
Garett:So that the bone grows back together. We remove the cast. You have a moment of, yes, I'm healed. And you have and you experience this big high. But then what happens is as the days and weeks go on, your arm starts to hurt.
Garett:And the reason it starts to hurt is because those muscles atrophied while they are actually in the cast. And your arm hurts and starts throbbing and your arm is weaker than it was before. And so then you start freaking out. And you're like, something's wrong. My arm's not healed.
Garett:Put the cast back on. Something's wrong. It's like, your arm is healed. But now we have to do the work. Now we have to, like, start exercising to rebuild the muscle and strengthen the tendons and stuff like that.
Garett:So that's the idea of growth is now it's the work after we've healed. So oftentimes you may have healed, but you think you have it when really it's taking on that next step. And this is all leading us to become better versions. So who would this kind of work be good for? Well, anyone who feels lost or stuck.
Garett:And let me say, first of all, this is not for everybody. Maybe you resonate with this, maybe you don't. Maybe you resonate with me, maybe you don't. But I do believe that energetic work should be a part of your journey. But if you're feeling lost or stuck, this can be very good for you.
Garett:Anyone dealing with certain traumas or diseases, anyone who feels that they are nowhere near their potential. And then here's the big one anyone willing to do the work. I like
Garett:to say what we do in the Shapiro style ceremony I'll tell you what
Garett:we don't do we don't sit around singing Kumbaya. Right? This is it's hard work. It's beautiful work. Right?
Garett:Anything that is worth, anything in value always requires work. Right? You don't, you're not given healing, you earn the healing. So it can be one of the most beautiful, most profound experiences of your life.
Garett:And there's nothing wrong with singing Kumbaya, there's nothing wrong, but
Garett:like this ain't it. So if you're looking for that don't look at you know look somewhere else. But so maybe you're like okay this sounds cool and I want to do this well how can you how can you show up to ceremony and how can you be a good passenger? Well, intention matters. And this is really, this is bigger than plant medicine.
Garett:But any plant medicine you should do, you should always have an intention. But I'm also realizing we should be intentional about everything we do. Why are you doing anything that you're doing? And I find that most people have problems because just start going through the motions and they don't even know why you're doing it. I don't know.
Garett:Right? You don't even know why you're doing whatever it is you're doing. So intention matters and that helps bring you back to presence. Research the practitioner. So I've been involved in this space for a long time and I can tell you most people pouring and serving medicine have no business doing this.
Garett:And it's because they haven't gone through their own proper training, their own proper death and rebirth situation and all that kind of stuff. So I like to think of it as fire, right? Fire can provide light, it can keep you warm, it can provide protection, it can cook your food, but it can also burn your house down, will burn an entire city down. And so these plants can be like working fire. So hopefully the person you're working with has done something other than just think that they've been called to do this.
Garett:Order to work with this medicine, you should have gone through your own trial by fire. Do the work. So there is to do a Chapego style ceremony there's a preparatory diet required and about a week before then there's the whole thing of showing up to the ceremony, doing the work in the ceremony and then continuing on, right? So like that's how you're going to get the most out of this is doing the work. And which kind of leads to, like, you know, ceremony is just one part of our journey.
Garett:Right? Our journey to become the best version of ourselves. It's a very powerful part and a big part, but it's only one part of your journey. So, key takeaways from this is that Ayahuasca is one of the best tools I've ever to help you step into your potential and help burn away anything that is preventing you from being aligned in alignment with your higher self. Who and where you drink with matters.
Garett:I cannot stress that enough. And I would say this should go with any plant medicine. Right? Please do your research. Just because someone serves medicine and drinks medicine does not mean they're good or it's the right environment for you.
Garett:The Shapebo methodology is amazing and fascinating, and they have this whole world of plant spirits. And I mean, I just, I've done this so much, every weekend I do, my mind is blown by how intelligent this is. It's hard work, like I said. Anything worth doing, but anything worth doing is going to be hard, right? If something was given to you, you would not respect it.
Garett:And, like I said, it's not a miracle cure. You know, we talk about Ayahuasca good for healing, and it is, but it's not going like I said, it's not gonna just cure you. It's going to help you cure and heal yourself. I actually went through this pretty good. So I've got about ten minutes for questions, but I'll also be downstairs.
Garett:So any questions? Or yeah. So what do you
Garett:think of using, like, Mapacho during the ceremony to ground you?
Garett:Yes. So Mapacho, if you don't know, Mapacho is a version of tobacco. It's a it's a jungle tobacco, nicotine Rustica, I believe. Yeah, Nicotine Rustica. It's much stronger, higher nicotine content, but this is what is used in the jungle.
Garett:And I use Mopacil, but yes, that is, it's a very good tool. The Shapiro used it a lot. And then passengers who are a little more advanced will use Mopacciole. But the way you do it is just like I was talking about with intention. So the reason tobacco is a very powerful medicinal plant is because it's very programmable.
Garett:And what you do is you speak your intention into it. And then as you're blowing that smoke on yourself, that's the prayer and smoke is the manifestation of that prayer. Yeah, very, very good tool.
Garett:Yes. Is there always kind of that combination of temperature with plants like you were
Garett:talking about kind of over Mhmm.
Garett:Like, is there always that kind of combination use? Is it per person?
Garett:It's it's it's per person, and obviously, it depends on, you know, the the the plants that the practitioner has a relationship with. And so there's many factors of what plants you use and when you use them. Yeah, the way I think of it is each plant you create a relationship with is like a tool on your tool belt or medicine chest grows a little bit more, so then you have more tools to work with. Although with that being said, I have found that it's a long story so I won't get into it but my journey with iOver has actually taught me that more is not always better. Right?
Garett:You know, if you have a tool chest of 50 plant spirits that you barely have a relationship with, you know, is that better than having four or five that you have rock solid relationships with? So I'm kind of more of a the relationships matter. I'll go here first.
Garett:As a passenger, how would you determine that I was ready for a cell phone? You said that you have to have a lot of be prepared and and do the work prior to
Garett:Well, so the the the first thing is the willingness to do it. You know, they they say that the medicine when you're ready, the medicine finds you is kind of one of the ongoing things. When it pops up on your radar screen and, you know, then I always do a talk with people. There's some medicine contraindications, particularly SSRIs that can lead to like serotonin syndrome. So there's that.
Garett:But really, I mean, the big thing is your willingness to step up is a huge factor in you being ready. Found that one of the good aspects of so most people know about Ayahuasca, the reputation of being hard. Right? You're gonna you throw up and all these things. And so while that is not as bad as it sounds, but the good thing about that is that prevents, that's a filter, right?
Garett:And also this idea of like, we're here to heal. So by itself Ayahuasca has kind of weeded out the people who are just looking to get high on a Friday night. Right? So, but yeah, so a big aspect is your willingness to understand what it is and then be like, okay, I'm going to do that now.
Garett:So what does the ceremony,
Garett:four days of the house? Yeah. So it's a good question. So my ceremonies are three nights. The fourth day, I just put on there, that's like checkout day, but just because I've had some people confused.
Garett:So it's three nights. The reason that is, is each ceremony, I think of it as one ceremony by the way and not three individual ceremonies. And so the three nights allows things to play out over time. And these energies can be very, it's layered, right? And so the first night, and this is very general, but the first night can be very surface layer stuff.
Garett:Right? If you think if you're going to clean a big house, like a house of a hoarder, you got to be like, first day, you got to be like, all right, I got to figure out what's going on. Right? You're kind of just laying the groundwork. Then the second night is kind of like, all right, we're getting in there.
Garett:And then the third night is then the downloads and then the kind of putting you back together, so thinking it's like energetic surgery. And then also, many of us have negative habits and patterns that we've been carrying for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, right? And this is not going to come out in one night. It's not going to come out in one weekend, but so that's why we do that. And so ceremony lasts about three to four hours.
Garett:That doesn't mean by that time it'll be sober. So the only thing that, so in a Shapiro style ceremony, it's a silent ceremony other than the singing. And so they sing to clean the room and each person gets an individual song based on their intentions. And there's really no other instruments, there's no CD soundtrack or anything like that. And it's moments of it's what I like to say perfect amount of structure and flow.
Garett:This is something I was talking about in my last ceremony, which is beautiful. It's enough structure and enough boundaries to keep us in line, so to speak, but enough openness to allow things to unfold, if that makes sense. Right? So, and then, yeah.
Garett:I would love to go to one of your channels. I'm going to get whatever information I need to get more in there. What kind of tips can you give to someone who's just learning about this as far as finding a good moderator or someone that can guide you through it?
Garett:Yeah, so one thing I'll also send people I have a like a resources PDF that I'll email everyone who attended this to help. You know there are certain like documentaries and books that can help but I think some of the things too would just be asking questions of like someone who leads these types of ceremonies. Yeah, I mean obviously you don't know what you don't know but you know you can ask them how long they've worked with the medicine, what their journey was like, what type of training. I mean obviously there's no certificate. Like, I don't have a certificate from the shipibo people, but I you know, you can trace my lineage down, and I've done enough things to where people can be like, okay.
Garett:You know? But and then also some of your your own intuition of like, do I do I resonate with this person? But, you know, you if if you start asking some very simple questions and they just start giving you weird answers, to me, would be a a red flag. We got maybe time for one more. So Yes.
Garett:Yeah. And I do like to say that we call them singing. This is fascinating though. I mean, would say I do have some singing, my singing is developing, that song would sound more but it's also like a chanting because it's not singing for anybody's entertainment. You're literally managing energies with the song, it can sound a little bit more like chanting and stuff like that, which is just something I found is fascinating and cool because, I mean, and these songs can sound beautiful.
Garett:But when I, my mind was blown, I realized, like, oh, there's not I mean, yeah, there might be a little, like, things you do to add some beauty, but you're like, everything is every sound is there's a purpose behind why that sound is coming out because you're directing energy. I like to think of it as Minority Report. Anyone ever seen that movie? That's kind of what it's, the big screen and you're just like, and you're constantly like managing energies. That's why I was talking about with the Shapebo and this idea, this way of freestyling is so important because you can just manage energy.
Garett:Good question. So, yeah, so I'll just say also, like, so in the ceremony, there are there are a lot there are moments of silence too, because I'm I'm not gonna just be singing for an entire three hours straight. So I'll I'll sing a song, then there might be some quiet time and then I sing. But, and it's actually part of the ceremony because you'll find that when I sing the medicine gets activated. You feel it moving around.
Garett:And then when it's quiet then everything kind of settles and that's often when like your visions might come on, your intuition might start coming in, and then everything gets settled. Like I start singing and then the process starts all over again. Well, I want to respect the time of the next speaker. So I will be downstairs at at a booth. So I'm happy.
Garett:And so please come down there, and I have a list. I'll get your email. I'll send you a resources guide, and I will get you on my newsletter. Alright? Thank you.