The beginning of the strict diet with Amazonian medicinal plants

2nd day: Don Lucho raced me to my cabin room at 5 in the morning. From that moment he began my hard and strict diet. Lucho said to me that i should take the tree resin of oje (Ficus insipida willdenow) in fasting. It is called “milk of oje” given their color similar to conventional cow’s milk and white. This resin has many medicinal uses, which have been used by the Amazon inhabitants for hundreds of years, for example, has an analgesic use and also combats rheumatism, thus its primary function was for the treatment of intestinal parasitosis. Lucho explained to me that before we start i should clean my body and told me a metaphor of when you have to plant.

Before planting you must clean the soil, remove the weeds, fertilize and then start to plant. In other words once cleaning my stomach we could begin the diet and intakes of Ayahuasca.

The resin was in a plastic bottle and he explained to me that it takes weeks to fill it because resin drops to account for drops of the bark and it takes a lot of patience.

I had a very unpleasant smell and since then I had no desire to consume it. The smell was really disgusting but I had no choice, could not turn back. I took it in one hit and was certainly well disgusting. I started to spit on the floor and curse my action. I noticed cramping in my stomach. In the animistic mentality all pain or problems begin in the stomach and intestines, it´s why many medicinal plants are purgatives.

Lucho told me that the oje milk will get me sick, suffering from dizziness and vomiting for two or three hours. He approached me a pitcher of warm water and made me drink up to 4 liters for a few hours since I should drink it slowly and walking for a while to help dilute the resin in my stomach. It surprised him that at the end of two hours and several liters consumed my condition was intact but yes I have to admit that I had to constantly go to the bathroom. At least eight times in two hours. It was clear that my body was cleaning of parasites and my body was expelling it in one way or another.

You must be very careful with the resin of oje since you must take the exact dose because it can pierce your stomach. It is recommended once a year. Therefore the importance that if do some shots of plants must do so with a professional and aware of Amazon medicinal plants. medicinal plants nor the Ayahuasca is a game and we must take it with the seriousness that it deserves, and always with a responsible use. Doing it without knowledge can very well get you intoxicated.

A few hours after breakfast a bowl of soup with tomato and noodles salt-free, totally tasteless. It was my first plate of hard and strict diet that awaited me.

In the afternoon, Lucho brought me the Amazon medicinal plant Mucura (Petiveria alliaceae) which has benefits among others to treat the gastrointestinal disorders such as diarrhoea, respiratory problems such as asthma or bronchitis and vascular diseases. He said the goal was to cleanse and purify my blood. Being the leaves whole, we had to crush them with a mortar of large old-style to make an infusion of it. And once crushed Don Lucho added tobacco.

The importance of tobacco in America

Let me make a paragraph because I am with the obligation to explain the great importance that has tobacco in America. It should be noted that tobacco (Nicotania rustica) that nothing grows in the Amazon has to do with the tobacco industry that we smoke in the West that is littered with chemical additives, carcinogenic, toxic for human health and planted with pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Tobacco in America is a synonym for medicine and is considered an extremely important plant for many people of America where it is originally from.It is a very sacred plant. There are many varieties of tobacco plants but only two are currently used almost all the time: Nicotiana tabacum, which is predominant in the tobacco industry and Nicotinia rustica grows almost exclusively in the Amazon rainforest and is a much stronger variety, can reach up to ten times more nicotine than a standard sheet of Nicotiana tabacum. Tobacco or Mapacho, as it is called in the Amazon, is a sacred medicine taken in different ways by the indigenous people of the forest and in the North of the American continent with pipe smoking.

Tobacco can be consumed in various ways: inhaling it, chewing it, sniffing it and drinking it.

The healer believes that the spirits of the plants are aided by tobacco. The drink is a very powerful and very effective purgative in the cleaning of the intestines, blood, and body, including parasites, viruses, killing and bacteria. In Ayahuasca ceremonies the shaman smokes the mapacho or tobacco to clear the bad spirits, clean space of negative energy and harmonize the environment.

At night for dinner i had fried bananas witn natural palm oil. Also a few flour cakes with tomatoes. Food was still totally tasteless but at least I liked it more than lunch.

Mucura Amazonian medicinal plant

The next day at 5 am Lucho woke me up and made me drink the infusion. It was not as disgusting as the eye cream but it had a definite garlic flavor. Being a considerable amount, I had to take it in four sips and I really did not enjoy it. When I finished I went for a walk (not far from the camp) through the jungle to calm my taste and distract me. The rest of the day was quite placid, I could meditate and went to sleep peacefully.

3rd day:  The next morning I would take Mucura’s tea again with tobacco and I had the same effects, always fasting.

At dusk, at approximately 7:00 PM, the ceremony began. The tourists were gone and I only stayed before the mother Ayahuasca. The brew began to take effect around 40 minutes. At first I saw iconographies of colors although the images were not very clear. I tried to understand its meaning but without luck, I was carried away by the Icarus and the moment. After a while they began to fade and I began to feel as if a drunken effect were in my body, wanting to vomit. I could remember at that time intimate situations of my life that I was not proud of, internal problems that I had not resolved that I will not share for intimacy.

Finally I was able to expel the brew from my stomach as it was resisting and the effect gradually disappeared until I returned to my normal state. It was not what I expected but the meaning was that my body and mind wanted to expel the negative part that was inside my body and soul. The experience had not been placid but I knew beforehand that I came to cultivate my mind and everything had a process. At the end of the ceremony, as usual, the shaman approached me and exhaled the tobacco or mapacho smoke wrapping the different parts of the body to expel the evil spirits from within. And later I went to sleep in my cozy cabin.

To be continued… Click here: Part III

Share this with your friends!