Adjusting to life after an ayahuasca retreat — what we call “integration” — can be the most challenging part of the whole ayahuasca process.
You’ve just spent a few days at an ayahuasca retreat center full of positivity, enlightenment, vulnerability, growth, and momentum. You’ve looked inward at your own energy, vitality, and consciousness.
Returning from an ayahuasca retreat isn’t the same as getting the Sunday Blues after a great weekend. It’s not even the same as returning from a great beach vacation and back to work. In fact, re-integrating back to normalcy often requires a fundamental look at what “normalcy” should be.
Tips For Reintegrating After Ayahuasca
It’s completely normal to have these feelings after using ayahuasca and attending a life-changing ayahuasca retreat. The best thing you can do is preempt them by planning a healthy routine for when you return.
Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church of Mother Earth in Orlando developed these tips as a guide. As always, listen to your inner voice rather than suppressing it. If something doesn’t feel right, you can make a change.
1. Eat Healthily
Eating healthy after an ayahuasca retreat is just as important as eating healthy before one. Especially if you live with mental illness, addiction, or chronic pain, it is imperative to put nourishing, natural substances into your body.
Think about the purge that ayahuasca catalyzed — the purge of inner demons, stuck energy, negativity, and toxins. Everything you eliminated during your ayahuasca ceremony was meant to be purged. Why introduce these toxins back into your system after an ayahuasca retreat?
Instead, think about your post-ayahuasca diet the same way you’d think about a post-illness diet. You want to eat nourishing, warming, hearty meals — you want to eat what your body needs, not what your body is reacting so vehemently against.
It’s overwhelming to think about eating entirely vegan, local, or healthy, especially when your previous routine wasn’t the healthiest. Instead, make this practice more feasible by following the 80 to 20 rule. At least 80 percent of what you eat should be healthy; and, 20 percent of what you eat can be for the sake of convenience or guilty pleasure.
When you can, make sure these foods comprise a bulk of your diet:
- Dark leafy greens such as spinach, kale, and bok choy
- Fiber-rich grains such as quinoa or buckwheat
- Omega-rich foods such as salmon and nuts
Again, don’t be so hard on yourself that you feel guilty if you’re not health 100 percent of the time. The point is to nourish your renewed body, not to weigh it down again.
2. Perform Daily Meditation
Meditation doesn’t need to look the same for everyone. For one person, meditation might be spending time alone gardening. For another, meditation might be moving through a yoga flow. In its simplest form, meditation is about being mindful and present in the moment. It’s about connecting with yourself and the universe.
Sounds familiar, right?
Just as ayahuasca can catalyze a deeper connection to self and a universal conscious, so can meditation. Think of meditation as a way to nurture the spiritual awakening that ayahuasca created. It’s like feeding your newfound sense of consciousness and enlightenment.
Forms of meditation you can try include:
- Guided meditation via an app
- Meditation with sensory additions (smells, sounds, etc.)
- Mantras (repeated phrases such as “I am enough”)
- Prayer
- Interpretive dance
- Playing an instrument
- Yoga
- Tai Chi
- Being in nature
- Gardening
- Listening to music
- Writing
There’s no wrong way to meditate. Instead, what’s important is that you have a dedicated time where you tune out of the chaos and into your self.
3. Purge Toxic Relationships
Spend more time with people who lift you up, inspire you, and make you feel whole. Spend less time with those who zap energy or require inauthenticity.
If ayahuasca has taught us anything, it’s that energy is sacred and even contagious. You want to surround yourself with positive energy so that you can maintain the momentum ayahuasca helped create.
Purging someone toxic from your life completely might not be possible. Don’t put that pressure on yourself unless it’s necessary. Instead, just maintain an 80/20 proportion for this aspect of your life as well. Spend as much time as possible with the good and as little as possible with the toxic.
4. Plan Another Ayahuasca Retreat
While you should pour yourself fully into life with renewed vigor and health after an ayahuasca retreat, it can be easier to do this when you know you have another planned.
Book an ayahuasca retreat so that you have something to look forward to; an anchor point and a source of inspiration and positivity.
If you’re curious about how long of an interval is recommended between ayahuasca retreats, be sure to contact our ayahuasca retreat center in Orlando for more information. We can talk through your situation and recommend which ayahuasca retreat option might be best for you.
Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church Of Mother Earth In Orlando
If you want to continue your journey with ayahuasca, you don’t need to travel to South America. Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church of Mother Earth operates just a few minutes from the Orlando International Airport. We have ayahuasca retreats most weekends, and we also offer other spiritual medicine such as kambo.
Book your spiritual retreat in Orlando or attend an information session to learn more about ayahuasca today from Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church of Mother Earth.
