Ayahuasca a Year On

Five weeks in Peru! An amazing tour at altitude through the Andes and a descent to culminate in the Amazon Jungle for a week of immersion with sacred plant teacher Ayahuasca. This was just over a year ago. Now I look back and see how that journey inspired my life.

What I got from my journey was immense and it was a challenging few weeks to feel at home again in this ‘civilised’ world of the UK. I felt out of sorts for several weeks. I found it hard to connect with those around me and even found it hard to metabolise food as it simply shot right through. Above all I missed the jungle, even though the heat, humidity, insects and lack of our ‘taken for granted’ utilities were things I expected to dislike intensely.

Ayahuasca gave me a wonderful night. It was the third ceremony. I’d asked to be shown why I was more of an observer to life rather than a full participant. She showed me a kaleidoscope of past lives. They appeared on screen like watching a black and white TV set. I recognised their impact and with a few tears of regret I came out of the journey feeling great. I danced my way to the toilets under a big fat moon for the usual Ayahuasca trio of pee, poo and vomit. On returning to the maloca, our sacred space, I curled up under a blanket to simply appreciate the rest of the night. Within moments a massive rainstorm crashed around us. The jungle creatures sang their hearts out to be heard above the thunder of the rain. The shaman sang his Icaros songs. As all of that wove around me I felt held and ecstatic in its embrace.

All I wanted to do on my return was lie on the grass wherever I was, listen to the birds, watch the clouds scud across the sky, enjoy and connect with wildlife, feel the breeze tug at my hair and listen to rain.

I was living in the beautiful environment outside St Albans, with peaceful gentle slopes and great trees, but I was called to be far further away from this neat kind of life.

I saw an advert for a room for rent I’d seen six months prior which I’d ignored because I had no plans to move to Wales. But looking at it again it really caught my attention. I visited a couple of weeks later to find the room had gone and the advert should have been removed. Never mind – I booked a yurt for a week on my own in September and then having fallen in love with the place, the people and the whole ‘back to nature’ thang spent four months in the same yurt over the winter. Did I get the rainfall on the canvas roof I’d longed for? Well, it was the wettest winter in Wales ever recorded!

Living in the round, in the middle of my own private field, in a secluded valley, totally off-grid was the best thing I have ever done. I truly came back to myself. And I allowed my quirky imagination to be ever more visible.

After four months I moved on as the yurt is a holiday let and becomes expensive. But it was also time for me to have far more light in my environment and be more on-grid as I work online. I was offered a teeny weeny caravan as a stop-gap which gave me the time to really drop in to the truth of what next….

And then it became obvious. I love hearing the rain and all the elements around me. I love ‘tiny-home’ living. I love being surrounded by nature. I loved Llanidloes, this generous-hearted market town in the stunning landscape of Powys in mid Wales. And I love being back on my ancestral soil. So I decided I’d find a caravan for lots of light and connected to the grid particularly internet, I’d find it nearby, and close to woodland. Within 48 hours I’d found it!

I have just moved in. It’s raining! Yes I know it’s officially summer but it is Wales! I have a 2 acre enchanted woodland on a steep slope with ponds and streams and little waterfalls right outside my door. From where I sit and work rabbits come and chomp the buttercups, a little family of birds with three youngsters feed at the bird feeder fending off the much bigger woodpecker, buzzards call overhead while circling on the invisible thermals, squirrels acrobatically attempt to crack the ‘squirrel proof’ bird feeder without success.

And then two days after moving in it hit me – this was exactly the kind of place I’d wanted without fully knowing it consciously…. the legacy of Ayahuasca.

I couldn’t be happier, It’s heaven.

You can find out more about the Peru Odyssey here: Peru Odyssey

Francesca