Your Body Speaks In Code

I’ve been wanting to start this blog for months, ever since returning from a two-week Ayahuasca retreat in Peru in March of this year, but it’s fair to say I’ve spent the last six months recovering from the inner demons I faced there and the aftermath involved. The healing I experienced was so fast and beyond the scope of my expectations that my whole world burned to the ground upon my return home. My life was the same and yet I was a different person. Upon returning home, in the same week I both confronted my father about sexually abusing me as a child, and then was laid off from a job I was struggling to find peace with. Then one by one, I told the three other members of my immediate family about the sexual abuse memories I recovered in Peru. Some believed me, some didn’t. They were still living in a world that no longer existed for me, and the siren song of denial has been trying to call me back to it, back to the cozy lie where I belong to a family that unconditionally loves me. That is a hard thing to let go of, and is the reason I have kept these abuse memories shelved in the darkest recesses of my mind – until now.

What also caused me to hold back from writing about my experience was the worry of what others would think of my unconventional approach to healing symptoms of so-called post-traumatic stress disorder (brought on by a more recent rape experience) by visiting a shaman in the Amazon to drink a potent visionary substance seven times. I’ve had different responses to this, some telling me it’s irresponsible to not see a therapist, some expressing envy of my deep healing experience, some even expressing concern that I was taking “drugs” to overcome a problem, the irony of which I hope is not lost on you. All I can say is that NOTHING I have ever done in my life to try to overcome a problem (and I’ve had several, from addictions, to eating disorders, to depression, anxiety, and more) had the strong impact and gentle support that ayahuasca gave me. I’ve tried individual therapy, group therapy, self-help books and seminars, SSRIs, self-medicating with pot, cleanses, supplements, juice fasting, and a raw vegan diet. All of these things helped me in some way (except the SSRIs which just made me want to hurt myself, and which I stopped taking immediately after finding out that this is a common experience in young people who take SSRIs) but NONE can even compare to ayahuasca.

This blog is named in honour of my deepest lesson learned while confronting my demons with ayahuasca: The body’s intelligence is perfect and divine. I learned how it has been speaking to me in code in order to help me confront my past, my fears, myself, and overcome that which ails me. It’s always been speaking to me but I have not known how to listen. I cried when I learned that my sudden “allergy” to whiskey was my body trying to tell me I had been drugged and raped the last time I drank it. The reaction of red, bleeding knuckles (literally from not being able to fight back) ceased to happen after I finally listened to what my body was trying to say. Strange? I would have thought so before.

~ “Nature does nothing without purpose.” – Aristotle