How To Work More Deeply With Psychedelic Plant Medicines
People who’ve had profound positive life-changing experiences with psychedelic plant medicines such as Ayahuasca, San Pedro, Peyote, and Psilocybin mushrooms often want to go further with these medicines and weave them more deeply into their lives but may not have a good understanding of how to go about it. This is especially true for people who are working with these plants outside of a plant medicine tradition or lineage.
If you’re looking to deepen your work with plant medicines, here are some principles that can help you to develop a deeper relationship with these incredible medicines for the purposes of healing, growth, and transformation.
These principles are drawn from lessons I’ve learned from the plants as well as from my human teachers and I have found them reflected in the wisdom of indigenous traditions around the world. They are time-tested ways to develop the allyship of a plant teacher and helper.
Relationship
Treat each plant medicine as a being you are trying to develop a relationship with. Each plant has its own unique consciousness, intelligence, and spirit and that is what you are engaging with when you are ingesting it. You are literally connecting with the consciousness of the plant or fungus. The first few experiences with plant medicines you might think that you are having a conversation with yourself or your own mind but most people who continue to work with plant medicines eventually have experiences where it is clear they are connecting with a separate consciousness or intelligence.
You can build a relationship with this intelligent plant consciousness as a guide and ally but it requires developing the relationship over time. Treat it as you would any relationship you are trying to cultivate. Talk with it, ask it for help, ask it for guidance, ask it if there is any particular way it wants to be treated. Engage with it as a living being you are relating with, not as an object you are consuming.
Understand that developing any relationship takes time, and that just like with a human, you earn trust slowly, . Don’t expect to be instant friends, but consider each experience as an investment in this long-term relationship. Plant time-frames are very different than for humans. We tend to be impatient and want everything now. Plants don’t work like that.
Expect this to be a long-term process and for it to take a long time. I have been working with ayahuasca regularly for 7 years and I continue to learn and see my relationship with this medicine grow, deepen, and mature.
Respect
Key to developing this relationship is respect. Respect the plant medicine you are ingesting. Appreciate that you are connecting with an intelligent conscious being that can teach you about your self, about life, about the universe, about many things. It is not a plaything to be trifled with but a powerful plant teacher to be respected. By having an attitude of respect you will over time earn the allyship of the plant.
Do not use it in a casual or recreational manner. Sure you can take mushrooms casually at a party or social event but generally that will severely limit the what you can get out of the experience including the teachings and the healing benefits. You’ll still have the serotegenic mood boost and other neurobiological benefits but you’ll be missing a lot of the deeper medicine.
Treat each experience with it as a sacred encounter. Do not rush into an experience. Make sure you have the necessary time, that you have planned for it ahead of time, and that you have time afterwards for contemplation, reflection and integration.
Treat the plant materials themselves with respect. Do not be sloppy or wasteful with them. Treat them as a precious resource to be treasure and honored.
I cannot emphasize this enough, treat each plant medicine with respect.
Ritual
One thing that can really deepen your work with plant medicines, is to develop a standard ritual for how you set-up the experience and follow that each time. This is what ceremony is all about. The components may be different for everyone but generally ceremonies involves demarcating a dedicated space as a sacred or special place for this work, cleansing this space before you begin, and invoking or calling on the plant medicine spirit you are working with. Sometimes this is referred to as calling the medicine.
Others may want to set-up an altar with important symbols of their work with plant medicine represented. Whatever you do, make it a ritual you do every time. Having a set ritual you follow consistently is also a way to show respect to the plant medicine you are working with.
Restrictions
Along with a ritualized approach to working with plant medicines, including some form of restriction that is part of your ritual can be very helpful. You find restrictions of one form or another in all kinds of traditional spiritual practices. Common restrictions when working with plant medicine include cutting out some types of food the day before, day of and day after a ceremony. This can include fasting the day of ceremony. This can also include sexual restriction (i.e. no sexual activity day for a certain amount of time before and after ceremony). The restrictions are another way to show respect to these medicines by sacrificing something in your life when you partake of them. They also help your body and mind prepare for the experience and integrate it afterwards.
Intention
Another way to show the plant medicine the respect it deserves is by honoring each experience with intention and purpose. Have intentions for every time you work with the plant medicine. This ensures that you are taking the journey seriously and that there is purpose to your work with the plants.
I like to think of intention as a request for help with something or a question I want help answering. It is an ask. We are humbly asking the medicine to help us with something in our lives. Ask the medicine to help you with something every time you work with it. It can be a general intention or a specific question you are wrestling with. It can even be a question of how to work with the medicine going forward. Whatever your intentions are, make time to contemplate and reflect on them ahead of any ceremony.
For people who are going deeper with plant medicines, asking the medicine itself how to work with it and how it wants to be treated in this relationship is a great intention and an important step in the process.
Gratitude
Gratitude is a key part of developing a relationship with plant medicines. They are literally giving of themselves and sacrificing their physical essence for our use. Be grateful for the gifts the medicine is offering you. Show appreciation for how it’s helped you. Acknowledge its contribution.
Every time you work with the medicine say “thank you” for everything it has helped you with or taught you. Gratitude is another fundamental way of respecting the medicine.
Gratitude and Respect are the fundamental building blocks of the relationship with any plant medicine.
Taking The Lessons to Heart
Another way to respect the medicine is to take the insights and lessons you have learned from the medicine seriously and put them into concrete practice in your life. This way you are both honoring the medicine and yourself. It is a sign of respect that shows that you are doing your part in this relationship.
When ayahuasca is offers you it’s guidance and you receive it and do the hard work of implementing into your daily life you are telling it that you respect what it is offering, you take its lessons seriously, and that you are ready for more. When you don’t integrate the lessons, the medicine will bring them up again and again until it’s clear that you are not serious about addressing them.
Maintaining the Relationship
When you work with plant medicines in this intentional way you are really cultivating a relationship with a plant teacher and spirit helper. You may not think of it in this way or believe in spirits and that’s OK but eventually if you go far enough in this work you switch from seeing them as physical plants to spirit or energy or conscious beings.
You do not need to be ingesting the physical plant material to maintain a relationship with spiritual or energetic being. You now have a relationship that is not just a physical one .When you are working from a plant spirit approach there are many ways to nurture a relationship without consuming the physical material of the plant. For example, you can call on them before you go to bed and invite them to teach you in your dreams as you sleep or help you with a question you have. You can thank them first thing in the morning for all they have helped you with and ask for their continued support. You can bring the same questions and intentions you would when ingesting them to a daily meditation. You can also use the shamanic journey format to connect with them more clearly in a deeper trance state.
In fact any altered state of consciousness (deep meditation, breath work, shamanic journey, dream state) provides an avenue for working with plant medicine spirits.
There are many many different ways to nurture the relationship outside of consuming the medicine. The most important thing is to maintain it in some regular way and to do it in a respectful and appreciative manner.
