I just came back from a really difficult Dieta in the jungle with Grandfather Tobacco. Dieta is an ancient way to connect and learn from Master Plants, and receive their medicine in a deep and profound way.  In addition to sitting in ceremonies with the grandmother medicine. 

I am so grateful for this work, and to be able to do it through the guidance of the amazing teacher Alonso del Rio, whose intensity is only trumped by his unbounded consciousness, wisdom and love. 

Of course, I just had to work with the most difficult plant available to me. I just had to fast for for seven days, and I had to take all the medicine that was offered to me during ceremonies. It’s how I roll. The most intense thing ever. 

This intensity is my strength, and also my shadow.  It allows me to step into my power, into my YES… but…. It also sets me up quite nicely for victimhood. 

And through all of this intensity, the coming apart, the disequilibrium in the ceremonies, I learned a great lesson. 

 “ It’s through the intensity that you learn how to be gentle with yourself”

The intensity is just a giant mind game. “If I expand the most, I’ll be even better.” It’s just more of the same ‘not-enoughness.’  Taking me out of the present, disconnecting from the real work of simply loving, here and now. 

In the last ceremony, I asked for less medicine. It was so beautiful. I could be with myself, with my heart, with the love.    And it was stronger than ever, because I could actually stay the most present, and work in a GOOD way. 

I can really relate to people jumping form  one medicine to another, this ceremony to that. I see people in crisis situations who don’t want to process their issues in somatic therapy, but sign up to take medicine at any cost. I feel it. 

There is this intensity that we chase. But really, the intensity bypasses the reality. The infinitely subtle reality of our existence, our self expression, our feelings and consciousness.

We can fall into the exact same patterns on the medicine journey as we do in our day to day lives. And if we aren’t conscious of it, we absolutely will.  Just chasing intense experiences. 

This is why I do so so much personal work in the form of process groups, individual therapy, supervision, etc. In combination with my medicine journey. Otherwise, it is so easy for old mind patterns to quietly take over and  make stories out of medicine.  

In my experience, the therapeutic work of opening is absolutely essential on the medicine journey of increasing the amount of energy (love) we can contain in our bodies. Without it, it is so easy to become ungrounded. Which is why I am being called to offer medicine integrated with deep internal somatic process.