Full Description
Since 1999 Jan Kounen has regularly traveled to the Peruvian Amazon to participate in ayahuasca ceremonies. At first only a curious filmmaker, over multiple trips he transformed from explorer to apprentice to ayahuasqueroand often found himself surrounded by other foreigners coming to the jungle for their first taste of ayahuasca medicine. Knowing how little guidance is available on how to prepare or what to expect, he naturally offered them advice.
Part visionary ayahuasca memoir and part practical guide, this book contains the same step-by-step advice that Kounen provides first-time ayahuasca users in the jungle. He describes how to prepare for the first ceremony and what to do in the days afterward. He explores how to deal with the nausea and details the special preparatory diets an ayahuasca shaman will put you on, often lasting for months but necessary for life-transforming results and teachings from the plant spirits. He also explains how it is far easier to maintain these restrictions in the jungle than in the city.
Detailing his own ayahuasca experiences over hundreds of sessions, including a trip in 2009 when he underwent 17 ceremonies in 25 days, Kounen describes how ayahuasca transformed him. He tells of his meetings with Shipibo healers, including Kestenbetsa, who opened the doors of this world for him, and Panshin Beka, the shaman to whom Kounen became an apprentice. He details the many other plants and foods that are part of the ayahuasca healer's medicine cabinet, such as toé and tobacco, as well as their icaros, or healing songs. A veritable "what to expect" guide, this book should be your first step prior to committing to ayahuasca.
Contents
Foreword by Alejandro Jodorowsky
Ayahuasca: Illegal Drug or National Cultural Heritage?
Introduction
Inner Journey Notebooks
August 1999-November 2010
Credits
Prologue
Yarinacocha Quarter
Welcome
A Good Drink, Peaceful
Houston, Do You Read Me?
A Whiff of Love Does You Good
That Kounen, He's Really Wacky
Dying Over There
Blueberry Madness (Part One)
Blueberry Madness (Part Two)
The Return of the Sierra Cactus
Nausea Under the Stars
Mystic Terror
Tonight, Some People Will Encounter Fear
The Wages of Fear
Faced with a Breast
The Serpent Breathes Out
Twin Towers
La Cucaracha
Ayahuasca Movie at the Cannes Festival
Star Wars in the Maloca
Remembering the Closing Diet
I Wanna Go Home
Epilogue
Ayahuasca Medicina, A Manual
Forty Questions and Answers
The Basics
Ayahuasca Medicine, Diets, and Songs
Preparing for Ayahuasca
Mind, Ceremony, and Intoxication
Visions
Advice for Encounters with Scary Serpents and Talking Plants
Songs
Receiving the Ícaros
After the Ceremony
Determining if This Medicine Is Right for You
Choosing a Healer
Healer Recommendations and the Ethics of Paying for Treatment
Treatments and Contraindications
Receiving Plant Healing Safely
Practical Preparations
What to Bring and When and Where to Go
Glossary of Plants
A Small Shipibo Lexicon
Four of Kestenbetsa's Ícaros
Bonus Track 1: My First Ceremony with Guillermo
Bonus Track 2: My Final Ceremonies with Guillermo
A Big Thank-You
