Resting & healing

As you probably read, but might not remember, I had a few intentions for my trip: learning how to be loved, getting rid of my dopamine addition etc. My plan for getting the later was to go on vacation, remove a lot of the doing (working, fixing, social media etc) and instead travel and enjoy not having so much pressure. While the earlier I hoped to discover during my Ayahuasca retreat. I have to some extent, but more on that later.

Today I’m reflecting on rest and healing, which I realized I didn’t even understand as a concept. I would consider rest to be “not working” and that there was like “lazy rest” translated into lying by the pool and active rest as taking a walk or a hike. Maybe it’s a bit more to it but to be honest that’s pretty much how I saw this.

Coming to Caya Shobo (the Ayahuasca and master plant diet retreat center I’m at) my intention was as I said “to learn how receive love” and the plant has for sure been working at it. But I‘ve changed my intention a bit a long the way to just “heal”.

For years, I would say since I was around 16, so 20 years. I’ve used my energy and my drive to do. To learn stuff, to visit places, to run my business, to help friends. I’ve been doing and doing and doing. Adding to all that has come my way I’ve also handled that, with very very little padding to be frank. So I’ve just added another gear.

Looking at it I really understand why people get burned out, I must have been so close.

Here I’ve been forced to rest, for many reasons. I’ll give you some context before I continue

• So before you do Ayahuasca you need to be on a diet. The diet means no meat, no salt, no sugar, no alcohol and no dairy to make a few examples. So basically you remove a lot of the fun from the food for 2 weeks. Coming here it continues and as we have a pro cooking for us, what ever we failed with before you follow when you get here.

• Second an ayahuasca ceremony (at least here) starts around 8 in the evening and goes on for 4-8 hours. Meaning you probably won’t get to bed until 2 and at least I have a hard time sleeping in too long. So the amount of sleep is limited.

• The special thing about the shipibo way that Caya shobo is run under is that on top of the ayahuasca we’re also on a “master plant dieta”. The ones that was chosen for me is rosasita and albaca (tagetes and basil) which doesn’t have any of the affects similar to ayahuasca, but we drink these daily so they are always working on us.

The limited sleep, the constant inner work and the lack of “normal” food, makes us very tired here. Adding also that we’re in 33 degrees celsius heat and with 80%+ moisture in the air.

This means that for over a week, I’ve spent almost 10 hours a day just laying on my bed reflecting or reading.

That has never happened before.

So came the ceremony Tuesday this week where I kind of got to witness the benefit of that. I could see the cells in my body going from depleted to rejuvenated. And I could move my body in ways I had no idea was possible. And the energy that came out of it the day after. It felt amazing.

So the last 2 days I’ve been reflecting on how I treat my body and my energy and really began to understand what rest actually means. And what happened to us when we spend and spend and never recover. In my case, just resting would probably not have done it, i needed help from the healing plants and focus here to be able to regain the energy. And to be clear I’m far from recovered though these two weeks but I’m well on my way and I believe that my new respect for healing and rest will help me get there.

So if you want to learn without coming here. I advise you that this weekend take a day and do nothing. No phone, no tv, maybe a book. And just give your self a day to rest. Talk a walk (without a friend or a pod) visit nature or just lay flat on bed. Recharge your batteries.

As this day have started I’m getting tired again. So it’s time to close down and do some more rest. Because wow do I have some catching up to do.