What 216 Ayahuasca Journeys Reveal About Healing, Transformation, and the Body
In a time when ancient wisdom is merging with neuroscience, the question isn’t whether sacred experiences can be measured—but rather how we can honor their mystery while studying their effects. After six years in the Amazon working with ayahuasca and gathering data from hundreds of participants, I found that some of the most profound healings can be felt in the body—and also measured in the numbers.
A Powerful Plant in a Complex Cultural Context
Ayahuasca is an Amazonian brew made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and DMT-containing shrubs, such as Psychotria viridis. It has been used in spiritual healing ceremonies by many Indigenous peoples of South America for centuries. In recent decades, thousands of Westerners have traveled to the Amazon to drink this “sacred medicine.” Not out of curiosity, but out of a deep need for healing, for reconnection, and for truth.
In a recent Guardian article, the author criticized the overly romantic and stereotypical interpretation of ayahuasca by some Western practitioners who want to tailor the experience for tourism. It is an indispensable criticism. Ayahuasca is not a religious instrument or an exotic product to be consumed quickly. Any attempt to export or commercialize it must take this complexity into account, since it is a powerful traditional medicine rooted in a specific cultural context.
Every day, in our center, we strive to pay homage to these roots. We put the concrete, corporeal and transformative experience of the person at the center, collaborating with local curanderos and avoiding any New Age aesthetics. We do not tell stories to attract attention. We accompany realistic and often challenging—and therefore profoundly human—processes.
Every night, in the forest, something happens that no statistics can contain. But science, if it is humble, can learn to listen.
What the Data Reveals: 216 Journeys Measured
In the heart of the Peruvian jungle, I collected data on 216 participants who drank ayahuasca and filled out a psychospiritual test before and after the journey: the Nondual Embodiment Thematic Inventory (NETI). What are the results? An average improvement of 38% in the areas of inner peace, emotional integration, and the ability to process trauma.
A particularly significant finding concerns those who, at the beginning of the journey, showed the lowest scores: people suffering from chronic anxiety, depression, and unprocessed traumatic experiences. Unexpectedly, these subjects are often the ones who report the most marked improvements. It is as if ayahuasca possessed a sort of therapeutic intelligence, capable of directing itself towards the darkest parts of the soul to bring light where it is most useful. The journey is not at all simple; rather, it is often challenging, demanding, and profound. However, this is precisely the reason why it can also be so transformative.
Also, those who started farther back and had lower scores and more serious wounds were often the first to fly higher. The medicine seems to know where to go. Although it may not disappear, the pain changes shape. It becomes a teacher after having been an enemy. And there the healing begins.
A woman who was abused as a child can finally sleep without nightmares. A father who finds the courage to look his son in the eyes. A young man who stops thinking about suicide. A man who has jaw cramps after reconnecting with his ability to laugh. These transformations also manifest in unquantifiable ways: in smiles, in glances, in a newfound desire to dance and play, in bodies that can finally breathe again. Not everything can be measured, but much can be felt. Unfortunately, statistics are not able to reveal everything. But every percentage is made up of names, bodies, and tears.
Healing That Begins in the Body
With ayahuasca, transformation does not happen in the head. It happens in the whole body. The most profound transformations are imprinted in the body. The body retains memories that the mind has forgotten. It retains trauma, and records it in the muscles, in the posture, in the skin. And because ayahuasca works on the body-mind as an inseparable unit, it works on everything.
The hallucinations brought on by ayahuasca are not only visual: they involve hearing, smell, touch, the perception of movement, weight, balance. It is a total sensory experience. That is why it is so powerful. It does not just tell you things like a psychologist would: it makes you enter into the experience, it makes you live it. And living an experience is always more transformative than just understanding it. Ayahuasca, by itself, is not enough. You have to live it, to remember it, and to act accordingly.
Amazonian Spirituality: Raw, Real, and Embodied
“Mind and body are an inseparable unit, cleansing the body has effects on the mind.” (from the book The Wings of Ayahuasca)
My book, The Wings of Ayahuasca, is based on my six years of experience working and living in the Peruvian Amazon. Here, I learned about the local culture, and especially about the collective wisdom surrounding ayahuasca. I discovered a very practical and embodied spirituality: “here in the jungle, spirituality means recruiting the help of spirits to do simple, practical things such as healing from illnesses, finding a good job, finding a man or woman to love…”
Amazonian spirituality is embodied. It is not made of concepts or mantras. It is made of blood, sweat, tears, vomit, and sometimes diarrhea. It is made of nights during which the body bends and the mind resists before giving in. It is hard. It is uncomfortable. But it is real. And precisely because it passes through the body, it leaves a lasting mark. A permanent healing.
Into the Shadow
Ayahuasca takes you there. In the depths of your psyche. In the places where New Age spirituality dare not set foot. The swamp where the lotus sprouts. And you can’t escape: if you want to grow, you have to enter it. There you encounter monsters, tar, inner animals, and all the Jungian archetypes related to the dark parts of our psyches. These things are real. The light is only found by passing through there.
Ayahuasca speaks a different language than the one we are used to. It is a symbolic, archetypal language that bypasses the analytical mind to enter directly into the depths of the subconscious. It does not address the rational mind, but that part of us that understands without words. The visions, sounds, and bodily perceptions are not to be interpreted in a linear way, but to be listened to with the intelligence of the heart.
It is the language of change that Paul Watzlawick spoke of: not the one that describes reality, but the one that transforms it. This is why ayahuasca can produce such profound effects: because it acts where analytical discourse does not go. It can reach places that talk therapy will never reach.
“When you purge yourself by vomiting, you cleanse yourself on all levels: mental, emotional and spiritual.”*
Those who seek ayahuasca with the expectation of immediate “enlightenment,” perhaps accompanied by comforting words and vibrant visions, risk being disappointed. Because this medicine is radical. It shows what you want to avoid. It dismantles illusions. It forces you to feel with your body. It doesn’t console, it transforms. But only if you let it. If you give up. Only if you go through the process to the end. The key words for transformation are accept and surrender.
Transformation Requires Surrender
Many describe the first night as a small death. The loss of control, the confrontation with fear, the body that empties or moves on its own, screams, and cries. But it is precisely in this space of vulnerability that a door opens. The symbolic death of what is no longer useful allows the birth of something new: more authentic, more essential, more alive. With ayahuasca, you die to be reborn. In the book, I write: “Ayahuasca leads you to die, and if you don’t resist, it shows you that behind death there is life. But it is a real death, of parts of you that will not return.”
This inner death is often experienced as a dismemberment: of the body, of identity, of certainties. But it is precisely this dismantling that allows for a more authentic reconstruction. It is a process as old as the human being: facing the shadow to find the light.
“I am always surprised by how the maloka at the end of a ceremony resembles a battlefield, with dead people here and there and vomit like blood.”*
The Aftermath: Integration Is Everything
The real work, however, begins afterwards. Without continuous integration work, the strength of the experience will likely dissolve, like a vision that vanishes at dawn. This is why in our center we accompany each participant even after the retreat. Integration is the process of translating intuitions into actions, emotions into awareness, and visions into daily transformation. It takes time. It takes discipline. It takes community.
Six months later, a subgroup of participants completed the NETI test again. The results showed that, in many cases, the initial improvements were only partially maintained. Some scores remained high, others dropped, and others returned to their starting levels. This teaches us that the experience itself, however powerful, is not enough to guarantee a stable transformation. It is in everyday life, in the following months, that the real challenge plays out: transforming what you have seen into what you are.
Writing, sharing, meditating, walking in nature: these are simple but powerful practices that help stabilize what the soul has seen. Ayahuasca alone is not enough. You have to live it, to remember it, and to act accordingly. To create new habits, new ways of thinking.
“The mind and the body are an inseparable unit, cleansing the body has effects on the mind.”*
Why Quantify the Sacred?
This is why I speak of “quantifying the sacred.” Not to reduce it, but to respect it. To give it a language that can also dialogue with the outside world. Because if we want the West to recognize the value of these paths, we must also know how to talk about them rigorously. Without losing depth. But without taking refuge in the unspeakable.
Scientific studies conducted in recent years have shown that ayahuasca has profound neurobiological effects. It promotes neurogenesis, or the birth of new neurons, and stimulates neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to create new connections. This may explain why many participants report a sense of mental “reset,” as if a part of the brain were reactivated. It is not just a subjective experience: the brain actually changes. New pathways, new possibilities of thought, new emotional responses open up.
Some studies also report a less expected, but frequent outcome: during the ayahuasca experience, many people report a sense of familiarity, as if what is happening was already known in some way. Let us not forget that DMT, the active ingredient of the ayahuasca drink, is a substance that our body produces naturally in small quantities. It is the only known endogenous psychotropic molecule.
This biological connection could explain the feeling of “familiarity” that many report. It is as though ayahuasca were not introducing something external, but rather awakening something that is already within us. And this, combined with the complete sensorial experience, makes ayahuasca such a powerful transformative tool.
A Call to Truth, Commitment, and Presence
Healing is possible, but it requires truth. And it requires work. It is not automatic, it is not guaranteed, and above all, it is not free. It requires active commitment, a deep willingness to go through the pain, to let go of what is no longer useful, to change. As I write in the book: “There is no healing without commitment. The medicine is powerful, but it does not do the work for you. It opens the door for you, but you are the one who has to go through it.”
So maybe science and spirituality are not so far apart. One observes, measures, analyzes. The other feels, welcomes, transforms. But both seek the same thing: the truth of human experience, the possibility of a fuller, more aware, freer life. Ayahuasca, if used with respect and responsibility, can be a bridge between these two worlds. It is not a matter of choosing between rigor and mystery, but of recognizing that only by integrating them can we truly understand and honor the depth of what happens when the sacred passes through us. It requires courage. And above all, it requires presence. A full body-mind presence.
Perhaps science and spirituality are not enemies, but twin lenses focused on the same mystery and the same possibility of transformation. Ayahuasca, when approached with respect, doesn’t just help us understand life—it invites us to fully live it.
*All asterisked quotes are from The Wings of Ayahuasca, a book by the author, Fabrizio Beverina.