Benefits of Ayahuasca for the Four Bodies (Mental, Emotional, Physical and Spiritual)

The below benefits have been described throughout the literature, in various books and research articles (see our recommended readings blog for more details - https://www.scienceandshamanism.com/blog/recommended-reading).

Ayahuasca – Benefits for the Mind

Increases:

-Intellectual capacity and concentration

-Problem solving and ability to come up with “highly original solutions”

-Decentering ability (Decentering, defined as the ability to observe one’s thoughts and feelings from a witnessed perspective)

-Self-confidence and self-awareness

-Personal growth

-Sense of self-efficacy and awareness of personal resources

-Clarity of perception

-Openness-related personality traits

-Decision making ability

-Motivation to change

-Acceptance, non-judgmental attitude toward our thoughts, emotions, and overall experience of “being”, despite the difficulty of our life’s events.

-Quality and quantity of dreams

Facilitates:

-Introspection, self-analysis and overcoming denial mechanisms

-Self-discovery

-Processing of unconscious psychological material

-New perspective on and reinterpretation of intrapsychic conflicts

-Reorientation in value system

-Revelation of intimate truths

-Acquisition of new insights and access to deeper levels of the self

-Meaningful reflections on life, nature, and consciousness

-Reordering and repairing stressful biographical, hereditary and social situations

-Interpersonal communication

-Structural changes in brain areas involved in attentional processes, self referential thought, and internal mentation

-Association and memory processing

-Neurogenesis, neuroplasticity

Ayahuasca – Emotional benefits

Improves:

-Self-esteem, sensation of inner peace

-Positive emotional feedback

-Empathy, compassion, understanding

-Positive emotional states and self-acceptance

-Forgiveness without blame, recognition of mistakes, liberation from conflict

-Insight into ones and others emotional states.

-Being more loving

-Processing and discharge of emotionally charged situations

Ayahuasca – Physical benefits

Enhances:

-Preventative health behaviors, healthier eating

-Positive personality traits leading to better health

-Increased body awareness, releases physical tensions, bringing relief and lightness to our body

-Immunomodulation

-Body-oriented detoxification, anti-craving

-Self-control

Ayahuasca – Spiritual, Social and Environmental  Benefits

Enhances:

-Personal and spiritual development

-Family and community responsibility, greater personal fulfillment

-Psychospiritual insight

-Quality of relationships with significant others, allowing for reconciliation

-Group cohesiveness, positive social processes, participation in activities that holds beneficial, health-oriented values.

-Interpersonal communication skills, strengthening bonds and creating unitary power of the group to which we belong.

-Our sensitivity to the healing frequencies of nature

-Divine spiritual power and existential values that infuse life with purpose, wholeness, inner balance and relief from confusion

-Feelings of oneness with the universe, profound peace

-Understanding of our own death, reconciling the emotions that circulate around this event, bringing peace to this inevitable experience.

Ayahuasca – Healing from Illnesses

-Traumatic life events and stressful situations that underlie psychological disturbances can be relived from a new perspective, at times through vivid imagery, enable them to be repaired, reordered and integrated in a positive and functional way

-Amazonian shamans have used Ayahuasca for a variety of psychosomatic complaints for millennia

-Allows the acceptance of previously denied aspects of the psyche, usually difficult to address with more traditional therapeutic methods.

-Helps clients transcend developmental and existential wounds

-Facilitates trauma processing

-Increases divergent thinking which has greater psychological flexibility

-Allows for the formation of new cognitive, emotional, and behavioral strategies

-Facilitate therapeutic interventions

-Aids clients overcome the roots of their compulsions and other psychological issues

-Improvement and cure of problems of anxiety, depression and addiction to chemical substances

-Substance use disorders: reduces cravings, facilitates understanding of the causes of addictions, the achievement of less harmful patterns of drug use and the attainment of abstinence

-Enables sustained abstinence from alcohol, barbiturates, sedatives, cocaine, amphetamines, and solvents

-Aids introspection, self-realizations, and healing of past traumas leading to better understanding of consequences of one’s addiction, improving decision making and empowering the individual to abstain.

-Increases non-judgmental awareness, linked to lower depression and anxiety symptoms, lower psychopathology and appears to be impaired in persons with eating disorders, cocaine abuse, borderline personality disorder

-Facilitates psychotherapy, by promoting ego dissolution, introspection, and self-analysis.

-Potentiates mindfulness, rapid and sustained antidepressant effects in treatment-resistant patients.