You are listening to the Moody Girl podcast with me, Emily Faser. Throughout this series, we're going to be opening the minds of experts and delving into the world of alternative healing methods. Before we start the episode today, I wanted to ask all of you listeners a question. Did you know that a lot of people are living with lower than recommended magnesium levels? I didn't know this either and had never explored incorporating magnesium into my daily life
until I started having skin issues. I now use better you magnesium or body spray when I get out of the shower in the morning and spray onto my feet before I go to bed. I found that when I had psoriasis and hormonal breakouts on my face or body, I was spray it on and at first it really started. But this was a sign from my body that my cellular magnesium levels were low. The more I got the magnesium into my system, daily, the less it started. It made sense.
If you're feeling like you could benefit from having magnesium in your life, I would strongly recommend looking into using better you magnesium oil body spray. Link to purchase in the bio. Now let's get to the episode. This week I'm speaking to Carlos Tanner who's a director of the Iowaska Foundation in Peru. Also, if you're enjoying the podcast and you haven't already, please do like, share, subscribe and give a five star review. It really helps.
The Iowaska Foundation provides Iowaska healing retreats ranging from 10 days, 18 days, all the way up to four weeks. If you've never heard of Iowaska before, don't worry. We'll go into this in much more depth on today's show. But to give you a brief idea, the word Iowaska refers to a medicinal brew with the main ingredient being the Iowaska vine. The vine is cooked, usually in combination with at least one other admixture plant.
To produce a brown liquid that is consumed in healing ceremonies led by amazin healers. It's not uncommon to experience a regression back to the situation or source of a problem or trauma, when doing Iowaska. It's said that to relive the experience is to gain new understanding and insights enabling resolution or closure. This topic is such a fascinating one and something I'm so looking forward to speaking with Carlos about today. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Let's get to it.
So welcome Carlos to the Moody Girl podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for inviting me to be on the show. Yeah, I'm super excited. It's a subject that I know probably a very small amount on. I've always found it very fascinating and even just before recording just now, you're already going
into so many amazing studies that you're currently working on. I'm really looking forward to sharing the amazing work that you're doing, your story with the Moody Girl audience today. Thank you for joining us. If we start this back at the beginning, for any listeners, I'm based in the UK. I've mentioned to people about Iowaska before in the past. Some people are somewhat conservative when it comes to mind altering experiences and
may not even know the basics. So exactly what it is. If we can just strip it back to the basics and for anyone listening who has never heard of it, who doesn't know of your foundation, can you give us a general brief synopsis of what you're doing and what exactly Iowaska is?
I'll do my best. Iowaska is the name of a vine that grows in the Amazon rainforest. It's slatting name is Bannisteriopsiscappy and it has become or developed over thousands of years to be the core of a plant medicine healing tradition of nearly a hundred if not more indigenous groups spread across the Western Amazon region. That vine was used by itself but then at some point more recently it was mixed with another plant called Chakruna which is the Latin name would be
Psychotriveritas. Now days when we talk about Iowaska as a medicine we usually are referring to a combination of those two plants. Psychotriveritas and Bannisteriopsiscappy but Bannisteriopsiscappy is the actual plant called Iowaska and the medicine that's made from it is also called Iowaska.
Of course there's a lot of different names because there's so many indigenous languages that use it but Iowaska has become kind of the global accepted name for it and what that medicine does is I mean from a chemical perspective within the Western medical world they would say that it
is an orally activated dimethyltriptamine experience so the Chakruna contains dimethyltriptamine and the Iowaska vine contains what are called MAO inhibitors or monoamine oxidase inhibitors that prevent our normal gut enzymes from breaking down dimethyltriptamine such that it can then go and stay in our brain for an extended period of time like two or three or four hours.
Dimethyltriptamine is produced in our body as well as all living beings and typically it's produced in our pineal gland and so even though you could call it an orally activated dimethyltriptamine experience that's not totally understood for sure and because dimethyltriptamine wasn't part
of the Iowaska for maybe thousands of years I don't think that that's like a complete accurate understanding of what the medicine does but what we can see or at least my perception of what happens when someone ingest Iowaska is that it reduces sensory gating which is sensory
gating is our natural conditioning to reduce how much sensory information we're able to process so the visible spectrum is a perfect example while our eyes are taking in a very wide frequency spectrum of light and colors we only process what we call the visible spectrum and then the same
with sound and all of our senses essentially reduce how much we have access to or can process and that's really because it would make life incredibly challenging if we could hear all those sounds and if we could see all those colors it would be almost impossible to walk down the street
it definitely drive a car like all of those things right so evolutionarily we've developed these limitations these kind of blinders for our sensory perceptive abilities and Iowaska reduces those blinders or like it opens them up to give the sensation of an amplified sensory perception experience
and for that reason it's done in ceremony in a very controlled setting so that you're not driving your car so that you're not walking down the street so that you're just in one dark space now the darkness would be to further enhance the sensitivity of our eyes so that we can like go as far as
possible into light frequencies that might normally be invisible or inaccessible to our consciousness as well as you know in in silence or at least people in their participation aren't talking to each other it's kind of a very inner experience and that ceremony process has been developed also
for thousands of years so it's really to me a science of consciousness enhancement in conjunction with taking a substance that allows us an expanded awareness or a hypersensitivity to sensation and what is super fascinating to me all of it really is fascinating but that
because we are taking in all that information our subconscious or our consciousness as a whole does keep that information even though we might not have access to it and so if I take Iowaska and now I think of a memory in my life I will also have more awareness of what was happening
when I look into that memory you know what I'm saying so that's like the really fascinating part so there's this incredible opportunity when you have an expansion of awareness to see like more of the world or reality or yourself and and that obviously has some real advantages but then you
can also access that expansion of awareness in your memories which can then really help you to correct any inaccuracies in your interpretation because of your own limitations right so so in that sense when we're talking about looking into the resolution of traumas that plays like a
really big role so essentially there's this science of consciousness enhancement using this incredibly unique medicine that helps to reduce sensory gating for us or to amplify sensory perceptive ability and that is the core of a plant medicine tradition that has developed for
many many many generations in the Amazon rainforest so our organization works with indigenous healers who have come from those multi-generational traditions and then we essentially organize and host programs healing programs for people from all over the world can do
that in a very safe and reliable way but also with an understanding that we provide like our own interpretation into the Western mindset so that these concepts can be understood like what I'm doing for you right now is my part you know where if you spoke to an indigenous corandero they probably
wouldn't put it into that language because they don't understand the world that we come from so that's where like our organization bridges that gap between two kind of distinct perceptions of reality such that the people that need that help can understand it and go as deeply as possible
with their own healing processes. Well I mean just so much to think about what you've just said there but yeah I mean like for anyone I guess who comes to the iowaska foundation you know how long is there stay with you when they do you know like an iowaska retreat or you know how does how does that look so is it like a big thing or is it like is it small intimate groups do you hand pick the shaman is do you have one shaman per person there's so many questions I have.
Sure well we we base it of course on the indigenous tradition we work with one indigenous group and we really work with one family within that indigenous group which is the Shapibu Konebo is the name of the tribe or we would just call them Shapibu and we work with one family which is the Mahwala
Pes family I call them those two names because in in South America and other cultures they use both names the mother and the father and so the Mahwala Pes refers to like essentially two familial lineages that came together when Daun and Rike Lopez married Daniel Bill Mahwala and their tradition became this unique creation you know when you when two multi-generational traditions were brought together and and essentially fused and and so that's the only people that
we work with and they run all of our programs. I like to keep it that way because that means that the tradition is the same you know we do it the same way every program even when there's other people involved they're still part of a very similar tradition but it's interesting to note just
because these are three coroned arrows I did have four coroned arrows from that family so at one point I was working with all three brothers and Rike Miguel and Ronald Lopez and then also Daniel Bill Mahwala and even within them they don't do it the same you know it's not like it's
it's not the exact same for each one and and that to me points to something that I describe as the art form of healing and and that's one of the things I'm really passionate about to try to return our understanding of healing into a acceptance or acknowledgement of the art form
and and that speaks directly to the way that the ceremonies are held because the coroned arrows I'm sorry I use the word coroned arrow um shaman is another word but that's not the word that we would use so I'm just going to keep using coroned arrow it means it means healer from courier to cure
and so the ceremony is a coroned arrow singing they they're performing it's a total performance but through those songs they are expressing a combination of heart and mind in a way that we don't really see I think in western medicine medicine and we don't really think about western medicine as
an art form but when you put it into art form it really does bring the heart into it and the emotions and you know when we listen to music we feel that right it's not an intellectual experience and when we see and we witness art whether it's dancing or painting or whatever like it is a holistic
experience for us where it combines our our emotions and our minds and our thoughts and then that to me is a better way to approach healing because we are emotional bodies beings and we do have physical bodies but you can't just do one or the other right and and so um our shorter
programs are what we refer to as retreats they're intended for people that are just looking to be healed and we have 10 day retreat that's our shortest program and then an 18 day retreat is our longer retreat then we have educational courses and those four are for people that feel a call to
be a healer that already recognize in themselves that they have a natural ability to help people and they are obviously like pulled in a preference towards plant medicines or indigenous traditions and and so we have a four-week course that we call an empowerment course which is really about
teaching a person how to take responsibility for their own healing and you know be their own healer with knowledge from these indigenous traditions or from the Shippeebo tradition and then we have an eight-week course that we call the initiation course and that's for students that
where people that really feel that it's their calling to work with ayahuasca as the core of their own healing practice such that they want to hold ceremonies in their home countries and want to work in that tradition to help people in their home countries so we've had that course we just
finished our 51st course and our four-week course we started in 2017 when we opened a new research center so we also like host research for those retreats and programs and and that's what our organization does yeah well I mean it's there's so much to it and I mean when when you say you
conduct research after a treat you know what what type of things are you looking at are you looking at you know how people arrive and then the level of health when they arrive and then the level of health when they leave you know how do you measure that and is it yeah if you could talk through that
process that would be amazing right in the beginning the research we've been doing this research for eight years or hosting this research I should say because I don't do it I'm not a doctor or a scientist but I collaborate with a team called Onaia science from the UK actually
and our first research project they funded just on their credit cards but it was enough to show the value of the research to continue that they were able to get a grant from the British Medical Research Council which was the first ever government funded ayahuasca research so that was kind
of cool well and and really thank you to the British Medical Research Council for for doing that but that research was pretty much what you're describing they filled out psychological evaluations that were measurements that could give them somewhat like a numerical measurement of where they were
for depression for anxiety for different types of depression and different types of anxiety for overall quality of life and emotional and psychological well-being and then those evaluations were given again after the retreat and then they were given again six months later to see to follow
up to see if that affects were lasting and that was I mean those results were really amazing especially the follow-up like in the case of depression there was a sharp decline in the symptoms of depression from before to after but six months later it had continued to decline
and with you know so with no treatment except what had happened six months prior people were still less depressed and and continuing in that direction so that really spoke to like a permanent change and that the permanent change was even like going to be more expansive as time went on
because as that person integrated the the profound transformation of the retreat it would then like you know permeate into the other aspects of their life and you know so that was like fantastic yeah I mean that's that was one of my questions actually I was going to say like
yeah because you can always do something whether it's a retreat or you know there's so many different health practices out there and whilst you're you're in it it probably feels great but as you say six months down the line life gets on top of people but what you're saying is that's
still continued to work so I mean scientifically how does it continue in the brain or is it still kind of in the system how does it like it's mind-baffling all right well it what is it right yeah I mean medicine and it's not and that's where it kind of really changes the way that we
should be looking at healing and looking at what medicine should do for us but maybe just touching on the next phase of the study so that was how the studies started but then we introduced or the sorry the research team introduced a look at epigenetics so they started taking saliva samples
before and after and six months later as well and and then they did genetic expression analysis so they looked at whether a gene had been activated or not leading up to a retreat and then whether that gene was still activated or inactive after a retreat and then again six months later and they
targeted three genes specifically that are already known to be associated with how we remember traumatic events so if you've had a trauma in your life and it is bother you know it is like you are suffering from the trauma then a gene called sigmar one will be activated and and so we can
you know this is the understanding that we've gotten to at this point that you could analyze a person's genetics and through that see if they are impacted by trauma in their life if they have an activated sigmar one gene and then after the retreat looking at that same sigmar one gene it was
deactivated and so that would suggest that through the process of the retreat there was a resolution to the impact that traumatic events had or at least how they transformed the way that they remembered those events is a really better or more accurate way of describing what happened and
then six months later it still was deactivated and so that kind of speaks to the heart of it right especially with how we remember now that to me is like very very important because trauma is not the experience that we have it's the impact the experience we have has on us and a big part of that
is how we remember the experience and how we remember the experience is actually how we interpret the experience right we don't remember the experience in its pure state we remember our interpretation of the experience and the interpretation of our experience or the memory of our experience
then serves as a reference for when we have any similar type of experience we reference our memory of to as an aid it's really like a program that should help us right like here's a situation what should I do I'm going to think what did I do before right like that's that's it it happens
just like that without us choosing to or not it just happens the same way that if I just started telling you about whales and I went on a whale watching trip right now like you're already looking for whale information you know like did I watch a whale documentary you know did I hear some
piece of news about way it just happens but it's to help us right it's to help us navigate the complexities of life unfortunately when we have a really detrimental memory that is goes against our well-being we still reference it and then it creates a negative response and now we're like
trapped in this loop where we have a negative response to an experience we interpret it negatively we remember it negatively and that negative memory serves to as a reference for our next response you know and and that's what I how I describe what trauma does to us whereas if you
can enter into that expanded state of awareness that I described as the effect of ayahuasca done in that scientific consciousness enhancement ceremony then you have the opportunity to change the interpretation and by doing so you change the memory and when you change the memory you influence
in a different way how you'll respond the next time and that is how that that program can be alleviated now when you're in a state of expanded awareness it's the easiest way to describe it would be turning on the light in a dimly lit room so you know you're in a dimly lit room you can see
stuff but you can't totally see it all right like you you have enough to like make out what you think is going on in there what where everything is or what it all is and then you turn the light on and a much brighter light happens which gives you much more clarity oh that's you know what I
thought oh man I thought that was something different you know I and so you see everything with much greater clarity that's the expansion of awareness right that's the amplification of sensory perception except that I'm giving the example as exterior instead of interior but essentially
that's the idea right what if I could turn the lights on and see much more of my environment or much more of my life and and so right off the bat you're like oh I got that wrong you know like if you thought that something in the corner was I don't know like an animal or something and now you
turn the light on and you're like oh shit that's like one of my kids toys you know like you're never going to think it's an animal again you know what I mean like you just corrected it and you'll never think it's an animal again you might have thought it was an animal for 25 years
but now because of this expansion of awareness or this amplification of sensory perceptive ability this turning the light on you know what it is more accurately and so you change your memory now you might still have I for so long I thought it was this until I realized
you know and and that is really like a way that gets described when people talk about their experiences and and so because of that it is permanent you know it's not that like you're trying to convince yourself of something that you're not still sure of but it sounds better if you think
this way which I'm not against but it's just not as profound you know this is really like I saw you know like I I saw it with my own eyes like it's different you know it's different than the way I thought yeah I understand you know and and so when you have that type of experience then yeah
it's not you're not going to go back you're not you're not going to go back like oh I've I learned the truth but maybe I'll go back and think it's wrong you know like you wouldn't do that you just you don't do it and so it's a real like magical experience to be able to have that opportunity
wow I mean yeah because I even with myself like I've never been lucky enough to you know try I was care but I've always you know kind of been interested in it and but I myself am quite in like anxious person and and have dealt with my own demons throughout my life and and have you
know gone on that self-help journey whether it be you know trying to reprogram my my brain in so many different ways which seems like a lot of work at the time you know and what you're describing sounds incredible and I mean I guess the one thing and this is probably from your perspective
it might seem so I don't know silly but from from my perspective I've always been worried what would come up if I was in like an ayahuasca ceremony what if you know you hear these stories of like a bad trip like a bad acid trip or and I I don't know I guess it's that it's that element we as
human beings have we're grasping onto control throughout the whole of our lives and as soon as we almost hand over the keys to whatever's going on in our subconscious mind it feels like a big key to hand over you know and so what would be your you know have you ever experienced anyone who
had a bad experience and and how do they how do they overcome it or how do they you know work through that to then come out the other side yeah well everything you just said is like 98 percent of people you know say that it's it's very very common and and by that I mean like the
concern that what's going to come up you know and and I guess like you know we all we're all like always trying to navigate what's going to come up you know even if it's not an ayahuasca experience we're always like concerned about what's going to come up like will I be able to handle
whatever my imagination is trying to create fear about you know and and I think that ayahuasca just kind of like stands out because you know that you're going to see more it's like oh my god do I really want to turn the light on you know like really want to see what's there um but
there's the the like positive component to fear which I would call faith because you know both fear and faith are are based on your imagination right it's like I don't know what's going to happen and I'm scared and faith is like I don't know what's going to happen and I know I know it will be
exactly what I need you know and so they're the same kind of concept or the same situation but two different ways of processing it and I wish I could just be like so don't be scared just don't be scared anymore you got it um but that's really like what we try to do and that's why I call it
a science of consciousness enhancement because the tradition has developed for such a long time that for you and I we didn't grow up with that tradition you know we didn't have a shaman who was doing this stuff that was at the core of our self identity how we understood our world
and how we relate to it and all of those elements were defined by these cultural paradigms we didn't grow up in that paradigm and we grew up though in us in our own paradigm where we do or at these did I think that it's fading but when you saw a guy or a person in a white jacket with a
stethoscope and they had like a clipboard or something they were you trusted that person like if they told you that they just did some tests and they came back with this and you need to do this you're like let's do it yeah yeah and I you know I think that is fading and um but that's like a good
example at least so if you grew up in a ship people culture you weren't like oh my god what's going to happen you were much more inclined to have that faith because you already had built upon so many of these truths that had been conditioned by the cultural experience so like you you just knew
there was a bunch of things that you just know and and that speaks I think to the complexity of consciousness right like we are building on all of these ideas and we have an idea that becomes like a truth for us or a truth in our culture and then on top of that we build all these
other beliefs and our whole belief structures you know down to these foundations of truth that aren't really truth but as long as we hold them as truth then they serve as truths in our belief system and and that's where like if you turn the light on and you realize shit one of my truths
isn't true then everything I built on it doesn't have anything to stand on anymore and and that can seem scary you know it's it's kind of like saying my whole world might come crashing down but that would be the fear like language but the other language would be that I just got rid of
all the bullshit that I had been living my life as and you know and so you do the best that you can and you know like you just do the best that you can I do like as my job in our organization I schedule calls with every person and we have conversations similar to this as I try my best to
guide them you know away from fear towards faith and the the way that our organization presents itself and like you know we're constantly doing the best that we can to ensure that a person is safe and in good hands and that the outcome will be beneficial for them and I think that speaks a lot
like I think that work does a lot now do people have bad trips well it's not so simple to say what a bad trip is right yeah normally you would say a bad trip is if you are in the experience and you say man I don't like this this is if you say something like I don't know you can swear right I can
swear yeah yeah you can like if you say I'm fucked up right now you know I am so fucked up you know if that's like starting to be the language that you're using then you might say that this is a bad trip but if you are revisiting a very emotionally traumatic experience so that you can improve your
understanding of it well yeah man that's not going to be a fun time no you know you're not going to be like oh great I get to like look at this fucking thing that's been like like poisoning my life for the last decade yeah but but if you come out of it and you have improved your understanding
to this to a degree where you can say I I think I'm good you know like I think I'm fixed then fuck let's have the bad trip again you know so yeah it's not so much about whether or not you have a bad trip it's really about whether you think it's it was worth it and that comes you might
not see that right away you know that comes from later on when you actually see yourself in that experience you're like oh shit I'm not triggered right now like oh shit I don't have anxiety you know and then you start to kind of rebuild a new you yeah where you're you're starting to say
used to you know because there's a new you now so it's like man I used to get so anxious when this happened but not anymore or man I used to get so triggered or I used to this I used to that you know and that's when you really start to confirm and then all of a sudden you're like
that was the greatest night of my life yeah you know and maybe an easy example would be you know is is labor like his childbirth a good or a bad trip yeah right in the middle of it might not be so good you know but very very often it is the greatest
day ever mother's life yeah yeah not not that day they don't they're not like this is the greatest to my life I try to say that you know what I think that might be an easy like no I I feel like I totally got that and I mean when you put it in those terms for me already it feels like the anxiety
is taken away from it because if you've got all of these traumas and I mean I literally had a therapy session this morning where we revisited some you know childhood stuff where I got like super emotional about and they weren't you know to the to the out out of you know um audience they're
not huge traumas but it's something that I'm still holding on to and I'm 33 years old you know and and so after that conversation today I'll just like I feel like I've got a bit of like a hangover from revisiting those even in like a discussion base you know um so from you just going through
that and saying actually yeah it's not going to be the greatest thing um to revisit these traumas and to look them square in the eye in this you know quite confronting uh ceremony space um but actually to be able to like take that rock sack of rocks off off your back you know and just chuck it to
one side and be like ah yes I can look at this differently now I haven't got this way me down so I resonated with that hugely and hopefully any listeners at home as well you can kind of resonate with that too um so thank you for that I mean um plant medicine I understand obviously
you're super passionate about that um plant medicine for me um was I guess my gateway into healing I in the UK like a medical herbalist isn't as like popular as in the states um but I managed to find a medical herbalist and she helped me with um some autoimmune conditions um so the audience went over very well now I've got psoriasis and I've kind of you know battled that throughout the past kind of four years um and I was reading a little bit more about a digestive issue that you
had um and correct me if I'm wrong and that was cured through ayahuasca is that did I read that right? Yeah you did um yeah if you don't mind I just want to touch on one thing that you said and I think that it's really important for your listeners and everyone in the world to understand it um you said that your uh traumas weren't that bad and I think that's also like a totally common thing
but I think that unfortunately it's the result of you know what I was saying like building on truth right that we perceive a trauma by the experience the severity of a trauma can be determined by the experience uh and but that is not accurate the severity of the trauma is determined by its impact on us and I read a really wonderful book I'm a father I have a eight-year-old daughter and I try to read some books you know like to be better parent this book is called Self-Driven Child
is written by a child psychiatrist and I apologize to him because I don't remember his name the author but um he brought up something really uh very very powerful and I want to like reference him because he is a doctor right and he did he does like no maybe better than if I were to just say it without that reference but he described a boy in a bad part of Chicago uh who witnessed his brother get shot in a drive-by shooting while sitting on their front steps and it had a really big impact
on him and I think saying that everyone would be like yeah of course like what a traumatic experience but then he contrasted the author contrasted that with a young girl same age in a very affluent part of Chicago who had developed this uh fear of failure but had like went to private school you
know had everything lived in like a mansion went to ballet school uh you know like all of these like incredible gifts that we would measure in in in what she had for opportunities in life but yet her trauma was equally crippling to her I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about
cytoplan a unique science-based supplement company with many years of experience in nutritional science and whose emphasis is on quality of product my medical herbalists swears by them as they don't use any unnecessary bulking agents before I found out about cytoplan I was taking up to eight
supplements a day all with bulking agents in them it was such a relief to find out cytoplan products are extremely pure I now use them daily and I would recommend them to anyone looking for quality vitamins and supplements they have a great range for many different health benefits
so if you'd like to find out more please follow the link in the bio of this episode and check out cytoplan you won't regret it and and so he did evaluations on these psychological evaluations that give a measurement of trauma they were the same wow and so I I think it's really really important that we don't devalue our own trauma or the impact it has on us because that lends itself to saying buck up you know like just fucking deal with it man look at these people I'm gonna imagine
their trauma is way worse than mine and therefore I shouldn't feel as bad you know and you're like that's not helping the process and I'm not trying to be critical of you I think it's a really important message for everyone to understand is that it's not about what happened to you it's
about the impact of what happened to you on you and so you can have two people have the exact same thing happened to them and one person let's say you get a dog like attacks you you know and so two people they both get attacked by a dog and one person could have this lifelong fear of
dogs that if they even see a dog it creates this panic attack and the other person goes on and has dogs for pets and like they're you know they're they both had the exact same thing happen but yet the impact it had could be totally different yeah and in that sense you could be crippled
by something that unfortunately someone else might be like whatever dude that what you know like oh unfortunately there's that like level of lack of understanding but for each person just to recognize that like hey there's no measurement of who got more fucked up by their traumas because
of the my imagination of what scale the experience was that's not a great understanding and it's not the reality it's really about how it impacts you and no matter what happened in your life if it had a traumatic impact on you then that's completely valid and shouldn't be like talk down and
that you should like acknowledge it in in an effort to resolve it yeah so yeah my own digestive issue you know I don't think that my digestive issue was trauma related and we kind of like switched over because of the segue of plant medicine I definitely did have trauma that
was resolved in my first experiences with ayahuasca and and as a result of that I I well as a you know the complexity of consciousness I got to a point where I was like I'm gonna fix this digestive issue like I was so empowered like I'm gonna do this now my digestive issue was that I
threw up every single morning my digestion was not good you know I it was always it was something I always had to be like mindful of everything I ate like even if I fasted I would throw up water you know I was just yeah it was like a problem and I went to a doctor and he did like an x-ray I
want to say and and he showed me this like blotch in my throat and he said that I had a cyst in my esophagus and that it was like draining into my stomach and and so I took those x-rays to an i- ears nose and throat specialist so another doctor and he you know put them up on the on the light
border whatever and he was like what this oh no that's a thumbprint right so and now I'm like oh what I'm like man like so I don't have a cyst he's like no you don't have a cyst and he's like you have an ulcer and I'm like oh okay well because of those two being so totally different I was like
I'm just gonna go and see one more doctor you know so let me like you know which one of these is is more accurate I guess and and the third doctor was like you don't have an ulcer and you don't have a cyst you just have acid reflux and so I was like what the fuck you know like aren't
you all supposed to be kind of on the same page here like what do I do just choose which of the problems that you've presented is the one that I will believe I have like it just was completely unsatisfying for me so I just said fuck it all like I'm I don't trust any of you anymore and
I began like looking for remedies and and that was like a big part of how I found ayahuasca it intrigued me for so many other reasons but that was kind of the seed to plant so I dealt with that issue for three years finding ayahuasca in you know 2001 there wasn't like a place to go
or thing did you know what it was like oh there's a medicine out there called ayahuasca but it wasn't like I was could do it you know and and when I did end up going in 2003 down to the amazon the way that I was healed was that I again in my fourth ceremony so I had really made these like
leaps and bounds in understanding and recognizing the true potential and you know I was just like eating it up obviously I have an affinity for working with ayahuasca you know I turned it into my entire life but the fourth ceremony I knew I would be healed so I had already brought myself
to that faith like 100% like I'm gonna be healed I'm gonna heal myself tonight and in the ceremony my spirit left my body and I at first I turned around and I looked at my stomach like okay let me use some x-ray vision I didn't really know what I was doing but I couldn't see
and so I was like okay what should I do then and I just came to the idea like okay shrink down and my spirit shrunk down to this little like bite size me and I went in my mouth and down my throat and then I was in my stomach no yeah right and and there were these creatures in there and I was
like I don't think you guys should be here so I started like removing these little furry creatures that had like spiky teeth and and and I removed them all there were like I don't know 20 of them or something in there and then there was just you know empty space of my stomach and this dark
murky water in the bottom and I thought that looks kind of gross but I drank ayahuasca you know I don't know I don't know what is it supposed to look like you know so I was like I think I'm done I came back out but then I like checked in in my body you know and I like I don't think so
like I still feel I still feel this like wrong you know something's still wrong so I went back in again and I'm like what's gotta be in this in this water so I didn't look under the surface so now I'm like okay let me go in and check out this you know swampy mess down here and as
soon as I got close I saw two eyes looking back up at me and it was this squid and it had its tentacles like wrapped into the exit of my stomach to block it like to dammit so that it would fill up with this nasty fluid so it could live in my stomach and right away I was like putting these
pieces together like oh you fucker like you know so like now I'm like oh every morning I got to throw this up because you're not like letting it go out because you're damning it you know to live in there so I'm like I gotta get rid of you so I'm like pulling the suction cups of its tentacles
off of the stomach lining and then into my intestines also and that hurt like physical pain when I did it to the point where I was like maybe I should just leave this thing and I was like no you know like you'll get over the pain you'll you'll heal those little suction cup wounds but you
gotta get rid of this thing so I get rid of it this is all hard to describe it's like in a another dimension like an imaginary dream you could say and and then I knew I was healed I did like curl up into the fetal position because there was so much pain but I knew I was healed of
the digestive issue that had plagued me for three years now I was just gonna heal up like you know these little suction cup wounds but by the end of the night I didn't have any pain and I just felt so you know relieved isn't even the best like I don't know empowered right I was just
truly powerful I had identified my problem and healed it and then later months later I would wind up talking to a parasite specialist and described my experience and they were like oh there's a parasite that looks just like a squid no when you were saying that when you were saying that I was
thinking it's a parasite and oh I mean you are you quite literally took your health in your own hands he just went in there and scooped it on out like that is insane oh I mean yeah I mean I should say this because my story is not the normal story and I'm not trying to like to my own
horn I do really feel like everything in my life worked up so that I would be doing this so that I would start the Iwaska foundation that would make it my life you know the same way that a professional musician is had a experience in their life that obviously isn't normal either you know
so it's not like every person as long as you just go down and do some Iwaska ceremonies your spirit will leave your body and you'll fix all your problems it's possible it's definitely possible but it's not really what should be expected and and also like even with my description
was kind of describing the ultimate right yeah like you turn the light on you see exactly what it is you fix it it's permanent you know and you're done that is definitely happen possible and it happens more often but still it's not it shouldn't be the expectation it you know it it would be the
ultimate goal it would be the ideal but usually it's somewhere not a hundred percent you know and that's where the integration process like continues that continues to expand on that where you're you're like working with it in a sense of like you know if you turn the light on in that metaphor
you just see clearly and you never go back right but if you aren't fully turning the light on but you get it brighter you know you you might now say okay I'm I feel much more likely that that animal it wasn't an animal I think it was a toy but you're not like I know for sure
you know I think that's probably more likely yeah and and so therefore you kind of still need to work on that so that it does replace that truth as it does replace that reference in your memories but some people definitely have it where like it's done yeah no yeah but I would say that more
likely is that there's a degree of it being done and that additional work needs to to coach that like to get it closer and closer to that truth you know what I'm saying right yeah definitely so I mean one of the questions I had actually was like you know do you recommend doing it more than once
so for people that come to do say for example one of the 10 day retreats they you know the lights can't it's on but as you say maybe the the thing in the corner they still aren't quite sure about what would your advice be for them would it be come back and and delve into that further
or would it be can you continue some of the work at home which maybe doesn't include I'll ask but it's exploring those memories in more detail right yeah well I mean we're focusing kind of on one aspect of our being there's so many parts to what health is right and what it means to be healthy and I do like have four categories of what healthy behavior should be focused on or maybe what causes unhealthy states of being and and we try our best to address all of them or really three out of the
four one of them is injury so we're not really the place to go like if you break a bone or something probably don't go to an ayahuasca retreat right that's one thing that modern medicine I think has done a great job with yeah but yeah so those four the the way I look at it injury definitely
can cause you to not be healthy we don't really focus that much on that but nutrition or lack of nutrition can definitely cause you to be unhealthy and I would say that across the board especially for now like where we're at with modern culture everyone has deficiencies yeah everyone has some
level of malnutrition whether it's a vitamin deficiency or a mineral deficiency or there's some deficiencies and unfortunately like what has been done to our food is definitely the culprit you know that contributes so much to that so we definitely try to give people real food that's
nourishing to like bring back better nutrition and and part of that is also by doing cleanses that help the absorption of those nutrients and then the next one would be toxicity as a cause of unhealthiness now that's also like incredibly prevalent more and more prevalent and to me that's
why we see like rises of illnesses when in theory we should be seeing everything decrease if we're like improving our medical systems but we're more and more toxic and and so that's a big part of it you know removing toxins is a big part of it to be honest like for psoriasis like to
me removing toxins that's why you have psoriasis to part right like mostly to part and then the third that I'll get into also which we've already been talking about so you can predict it but nutrition or malnutrition and then toxicity are really important to address and so we do a lot of
cleanses the ayahuasca ceremonies of which there are five by the way on a 10 day retreat also are a version of cleansing for sure but they're more on the emotional and spiritual elements of cleansing and in the mental whereas the body we have cleanses using medicines that are categorized
as purgatives that are specifically designed to clean your digestive system which no one loves to do because they like make you throw up or have diarrhea but they're really important to cleanse the digestive system we take medicines that cleanse the circulatory system that cleanse the blood
that has those toxins running through them and we cleanse the central nervous system also like really really important to have a pure central nervous system because all of those things can then start to cause all of our current like epidemic of age-related issues like outtimers and
dementia and Parkinson's and all those things to me that's the case of detoxification wow and and the respiratory system and we have vapor baths that are like sauna's that help a sweat out so there's a huge detox process in those 10 days and and that's like in conjunction
with the work that's being done in those five ayahuasca ceremonies which are every other night during the the 10 day retreat wow and then that third one or really the fourth because I started with injury is emotional trauma and the effects of trauma can be really devastating and they affect
the other elements and and that that's the part that's like harder to grasp I mean we really don't have much of an understanding of the effects of trauma and how trauma works unfortunately there's almost like nothing that is done about it not to describe your therapist but you know
even the talk therapy just hasn't shown to alleviate trauma very well and medication doesn't do anything but mask it but the way that trauma can impact us you know one way of saying it would be that you express it in physical illnesses or symptoms and you know I guess I could just leave it
there that it gets expressed I think that more complex is like if you start to hate a part of yourself as a result of the impact of trauma then your hatred of that part of yourself will you'll have a response from the part that you're hating you know so if you have if you hate a
particular part you're literally like I wish you would die cells and then your cells are like dude we're getting the message to like just fuck off so you know let's not let's listen to what the message is of course you're not you don't want to send that message but because of the trauma
you're trapped in this loop where you're essentially sending and directing your own self towards a lack of health or towards a negative outcome and and so we try to deal with emotional trauma and that's a lot of what happens in the ayahuasca ceremonies and then outside of the ceremonies we do
our best to detoxify the body and also to bring back a more nourishing diet and and those three components don't have to be done with ayahuasca I think that ayahuasca is an incredibly powerful when it comes to the trauma parts but outside of that or anytime like today you know we could always
engage in a detoxification or at the very least we could be more mindful about limiting the toxins you know and and that I mean that should be what our doctors are doing right like if you go into if you if you go in and see your doctor the very first things they should ask are what are you eating you know and and what what toxins are entering your system hopefully and you know so let's like start there and let's stop the toxins and improve the nutrition and you'll make so much
progress just by doing that. 100% rather than the prescription you know steroids and God knows what that people are kind of pumping into their body and then it's just this you know repetitive cycle and they're more symptom show up and then I mean that's why I started this podcast really
because I was just like so done with like going to the GP and and trying to find out answers and having to like self advocate and and being kind of you know silence each time and and knowing fundamentally in my gut that actually like I there were ways of healing myself and from
plant medicine I actually did heal my psoriasis it was like within the space of like four weeks and I'd completely heal and I'd done like a huge gut cleanse before that and you know it fluctuates obviously with different stresses stresses that are going on and triggers then it'll flare up
again so I have to kind of review it and then look at my diet look at the toxins and then you know have a chat with my herbalist and see whether we weave in some more plant medicine and depending on the situation but I mean that was just like so empowering for me for the first time in my life
to be able to to have to take my own health into my own hands and make that informed decision which ultimately helped to cure my psoriasis for my wedding day which was like a huge thing for me in terms of my confidence in terms of like walking down the aisle you know with that yeah happiness
and contentment so yeah so 100% I think that's so important I think the work that you're doing is is just honestly it's like my mind is blown and what you just described to is kind of almost perfect to what I was pointing out you know like so even without Iowascar well without
that specific treatment for what I'll still refer to as trauma you know unfortunately when you have stress when you have like some negative responses then there can still be a flare up right and so that to me is because well you can only go so far yeah that's where like a treatment
like Iowascar can take it to that last degree you know can really like resolve some of that so that you don't have that response that expresses itself in that way um definitely yeah it feels like the missing link actually for me and especially so definitely be something I look into more depth
um and I wanted to ask um so before we start recording you were speaking about the new research that you're doing for PTSD and in specifically veterans so I think this is something that's fascinates me I mean there's loads of programs on Netflix on you know people like cancer patients
who'll be given like a psilocybin you know trip and it helps them to come to terms with dying essentially um and so this used in like a medical format is something that's so fascinating to me and and something that I feel should be available um you know for everyone in the right situation
um so yeah can you tell us more about the research that you're doing currently which starts tomorrow if I'm correct yeah the pilot study starts tomorrow in fact right now the the veterans are like having their preliminary data collected like before the the retreat begins and um so they're like
working with the ONIA science research team as we speak um so that's a group of 10 veterans and they were selected because of their already involvement with a group called heroic hearts which is also in the UK um and Canada and that organization is specifically helping veterans to go to ayahuasca retreats um because ayahuasca has been shown so well to alleviate or or help with trauma and and so it's this really awesome collaboration I should and definitely want to mention um the
Grandtown Foundation is funding it so an organization in the United States called the Grandtown Foundation cared enough to say can we fund this project so they're funding this entire project in collaboration with heroic hearts who already has this network of veterans looking to receive this treatment ONIA science which has already been doing this uh scientific research and has published the results such that we're able to um validate the need for research like this and then our organization so
it's this really like beautiful coming together um and yeah that research is incredibly comprehensive so when I mean data collection like as gross as it might sound um they are all giving poop samples uh so that their gut biome can be analyzed before they do the retreat and they're giving saliva
samples so that their genome can be analyzed before the retreat for potential epigenetic changes and and then they're getting fitted with their EEG helmets um or whatever the right term is for that um so that they can have the brainwave readings um to also measure the changes in brainwave function
as a result and then and then they're also filling out the psychological evaluations I I'm really like um appreciative that they are so willing to do the research obviously they're not paying for it so in that sense like they're it's a trade-off like to be to participate in this study but to also
receive the benefit of the retreat itself but yeah I mean it's just like I said it's coming together of all these pieces in a really wonderful way and I agree with you 100% I mean I think that I would love to see a revival of plant medicine and a revival of plant spirit medicine um you know
like a an understanding of that use of expanded awareness through particular plant medicines and psilocybin is definitely one of them I would say on a global scale psilocybin should be the like global shamanic medicine if you want to call it that but that we don't really have the same
depth of understanding of the process of that science of consciousness enhancement that comes from the tradition of its use with psilocybin that we do with ayahuasca ayahuasca to me is probably the most intact shamanic tradition in the world and also like other medicines like ibogaine or
apoga rather and peyote and san padro um you know there are some other plant medicines that do have a tradition but I don't think that they are as intact as the ayahuasca tradition so to me like studying the ayahuasca tradition uh so that we can integrate the principles of that tradition
into our understanding of how other medicines are administered is tremendous value for us and and that's like a big passion for me uh I've already like talked about the idea of having chemotherapy ceremonies as a way to introduce and exemplify the impact of elements of the tradition
whereas if you were to instead of go to the hospital for a chemotherapy session which most people hate and they already have an incredibly negative impression about it which to me is not conducive to greater benefit you know it works against you if you hate the treatment that
you want to heal you yeah it's almost like calling a person you hate when you need some help you know yeah probably not going to give you the best quality of help that you want and yeah and so what if you instead like go to this beautiful place in the woods to get your chemotherapy
and it's not sterile you know it doesn't conjure up all the memories of negative feelings that hospitals tend to do yeah and and that the administration of the chemotherapy is a beautiful performance where you are actually directed towards looking inward so you're not watching tv while
you're on chemo you're not like distracting yourself intentionally from anything that's happening but yet at the same time hoping that it will somehow resolve your issues while you do your best to not give any attention to them and you know there will be so many of these components and I
you know it's inevitable to me that we could dramatically increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy which I'm not saying everybody should get chemotherapy but it's there and it's the go to can we make it better and I think that it's a great example of how we could integrate our a deeper
understanding of indigenous or ancestral traditions to improve the effectiveness of our current medical models and that's what I'm passionate about yeah I mean that's that makes so much sense as well because I mean in so many situations on a daily basis now we're constantly distracting
ourselves if we feel stressed out if you've just had an argument with somebody and you know as you say if somebody's getting chemotherapy in a hospital don't want to think about it even though it's your body is is sick effectively and you've got cancer within the body and and rather than
kind of as you say going inward we're detaching from it so it's just so detached even our sickness and yeah and just having those negative connotations so I mean that sounds incredible if fingers crossed I never have to do that but I would 100% sign me up for for whatever you do
well I mean to be totally honest I'm you know a lot of people are like what are you doing you know you like you want people to get chemotherapy and honestly I don't yeah that's also another yeah another huge discussion I do feel that a better approach would be to go deep into detoxification
and to go deep into the better nourishment you know just like we said as well as to deal with emotional trauma like that to me would be my preference but trying to tell you know trying to like oh let's just bring that in you know I want to get there but I also want to be realistic yeah I
want to be realistic but um but yeah I um you know there was one thing that you said that you it was really cool you were talking about your own healing with psoriasis and you said I felt it in my gut and and that little phrase thank god that we still have that phrase you know because it
really speaks to something that I tie very closely to our ancestry our ancestral traditions when we we still consider ourselves part of the earth where we still gave thanks to the elements of nature like what we recognize now in shamanism but yet we don't actually hold as a foundational
truth in our own realities and so unfortunately we tend to now see ourselves as just like an individual alone on the world and we're just all like in competition with each other but at the very least happen to be on the same place at the same time but without a connection and I think
that that itself is a trauma that is like a cultural trauma that is almost at a at a species level because it's so prevalent that inaccuracy of understanding that wasn't a part of our ancestral tradition and the gut feeling why it speaks to me is because that is the world speaking to you
right and so we're receiving that message through our sensory organs and yeah we receive information when we see and stuff uh and and have the like classic five sensory experiences but we also have all these other organs that are also sensory organs but we don't value them
but thankfully we have gut feeling right we still have it it's still there because it's such a reality and and to me that is proof of the connection that no we are part of the earth I am a part of the region I live in and I am a part of this entire being that is the earth that is incredibly
wise and incredibly powerful and because of that connection right off the bat we could alleviate the aloneness that is an inaccurate interpretation of our identity but it is a truth that we then build a detrimental belief system on top of and and it's those core truths that I think we need to
be able to evaluate and it's through traditions like ayahuasca that can help us to resolve those or improve those inaccuracies so that we build our reality on a foundation of truth that serves us and that truth does not that we are alone and and that we are not supported by the world that we live
in and then you start to then see how you interact with other people when you realize that like you and I are cells in the same body then of course it will influence my behavior towards you or I mean influence my behavior towards anyone and that tree is is like a cell in the same body
that I am a part of therefore my reaction to that tree the way I treat nature the way I treat animals like all of these things starts to change because of one core truth that we make more accurate and that is the truth of our ancestors of our ancestral traditions that are some of which
are still intact like the Amazonian traditions of ayahuasca wow yeah I mean they just like listen to all day so I wanted to finish up today for anyone listening who is interested in ayahuasca but they don't know where to start online where do they go what are the where's the best place for
them to have a look to have any websites any books that we can read yeah that will be amazing well I'm writing a book so hopefully this year a book will come out by me but yeah you can visit our website which is ayahuasca foundation.org or just search for ayahuasca foundation
I'm Carlos Tanner you can also search for me I have a you the ayahuasca foundation has a YouTube channel and on that channel is a series of 10 episodes called Lessons for my ayahuasca so that might be a good place to start if you do think that ayahuasca might be a good path to take I do
try to go through like all the different elements some of which we talked about today and but of course our website does have a lot of information other books that I might recommend there is an author named Joe to Ford who wrote a book called Fellowship of the River
he's a friend of mine he's a medical doctor in the US but he did a five-year apprenticeship in the Shippeebo tradition which is really unique I would also recommend the author Leonard Lascao who wrote healing with love and forgiving love he's a big influence even though I don't think
he's ever drank ayahuasca but his understanding of how consciousness and its combination with love and the highest frequency of emotions are the most powerful thing that we can have and that's what I brought up at the very beginning about healing as an art form and and so if I had
one thing to say I would like suggest the consideration of healing as an art form and such that when you go to your doctor the way you feel about your doctor is incredibly important and you want to have a feeling of the highest frequency possible right you want to love your doctor and you want to
love the medicine and the treatment that is if you know as close as you can get we'll directly correlate to the amount of benefit you receive from your doctor from the treatment and from the medicine that's amazing thank you so so much for your time today I feel like honestly there's so many more
questions that I've got that it's it's been eye opening for me and something I'm going to look into in more depth now and who knows maybe I'll make it to the Amazon to join you one day all right cool thank you so much and thank you for listening to the Moody Girl audience have a great weekend you take care bye this was a conversation that really stuck with me even from just speaking with Carlos and not even trying I wask of myself I felt a greater one for universal unity and togetherness
so much of life is gearing us up to be overly competitive selfish and jealous but what if we start looking at this differently being more open to new ideas and ways of thinking learning from each other and rooting for friends family strangers and even nature surely this would be better
for society nobody actually knows what or where consciousness comes from but the Iowasca experience certainly sounds like it gets deeper than we've ever been before and it certainly seems as highlighting that our mind is an incredibly powerful tool for healing if you'd like to find out more you can check out Carlos on his socials at Iowasca Foundation and his website is www.ioascafoundation.org you can also keep up to date with me or my socials at Moody Girl official until next time