The symptom, when welcomed, is not just a wound: it is a threshold. And the threshold, when crossed together, becomes transformation.
In an ayahuasca ceremony, anything can happen. But what matters most is not so much what happens, but how we move through it, and above all, the human container that holds us as we do so. In the Amazon, the forest teaches us that life is not linear: it grows through entanglement, blossoms in contrast, and renews itself from chaos.
At Paojilhuasca, our center nestled deep in the heart of Peru, this is the vision that guides us: to offer a safe space where human beings can allow their shadows to emerge without being silenced or judged. A place where even an eruption of pain, rage, or disorder can become a gateway to healing, transformation, and shared love, supported and held so that no one is overwhelmed.
What I’m about to share is the story of a difficult night, and the beauty that arose from it. A night that tested us, but also revealed the strength of a group, the collective intelligence of a gathering of human beings, and the depth of a path that does not end with the sunrise.
When Ayahuasca Calls Us All to Serve
The ceremony began in a calm, even cheerful atmosphere. Participants drank the medicine with trust, the icaros flowed like clear water, and a dense sense of peace settled in the maloca. But as we know: Ayahuasca follows no script. It moves like an ancient river that knows hidden caves, underground fractures, and shafts of light.
Something shifted. A subtle tension lingered in the air, like a taut string threatening to snap. One participant began to move restlessly, disturbing those nearby. Within minutes, agitation turned into eruption: his body invaded others’ spaces, he screamed, threw objects, inflicted pain on himself, oscillated between aggression and a desperate need for love, disordered sexual gestures, and pleaded for touch.
It was a crashing wave, like a fierce inner dialogue between fractured parts of the soul. Rage and longing, tenderness and destruction chased each other. A living, embodied hell. Suffering wore many faces: ferocious and fragile, desperate and yearning for connection.
Fabrizio stepped in with respectful firmness. I saw it: unshakable presence. He held the body, but honored the spirit. I supported him with other tools: bringing lightness, cool water, essences, distractions, and gentle calls back to awareness. We searched for cracks where consciousness might break through, but the psychotic break was deep, and panic had already set in.
His partner stood by, eyes locked in his. She was afraid, yes, but also unwavering in her love. It was the most striking of all: the strength she found within herself not to flee, but to stay. Despite everything.
Around us, the group didn’t collapse. It divided, multiplied, and responded with shared, ancient, instinctive wisdom. No one left. Each person took their place without being asked, and the maloca became a living organism.
A protective membrane formed. Some purified the energy. Others offered comfort, containment, or simply sat and breathed, holding the invisible thread of collective coherence. Even those lost in their inner journeys were contributing, through their absence, their dreams, their silence, or their tears and trembling.
Finally, after hours that felt like days, we were able to physically contain Z., and, after his partner’s consent, administered a calming remedy. A pharmacological caress, not a punishment. Not to suppress, but to offer relief.
The tension eased. What remained was a silence, dense, not empty. A silence that held.
The Day After: The Beauty That Follows Chaos
At dawn, the maloca seemed to breathe again. The signs of the night were visible, bruises, broken objects, water and vomit everywhere, but surprisingly few, considering the intensity of what had happened. And yet there was dignity, presence, a kind of sacredness hovering over the still-weary bodies.
The air was thick with something that felt like peace. Not a comfortable peace, but the kind that follows a battle won together.
In the talking circle, the medicine kept flowing. Words became medicine. Each voice, a tile in the mosaic of collective truth. The protagonist of the night sat with us. Different. Calmer, more connected. He remembered nothing. He listened to accounts of those he had struck, bitten, whose belongings he had torn or broken, without defending himself, like someone discovering another life hidden inside his own.
He was disoriented, but present. He apologized. He gave thanks.
His voice carried an ancient hiss, a primal fear still difficult to name. An emotion so strong it needed support to be felt, so it wouldn’t be cast out again. His partner held a silent strength. Perhaps still too close to her pain to let it move through. Her wound was muted, held beneath the surface. And we could see it: this is where the healing would need to begin, so that silence wouldn’t turn into trauma.
The others spoke with authenticity and generosity. Each reflection, a shard of shared consciousness.
One participant, despite having been physically assaulted, chose to interpret the episode as part of the process, using it as an invitation to take responsibility for his own inner struggle.
Ms. A., who had come seeking an “epic” experience, found gratitude in the chaos itself. She saw that abundance means welcoming everything, even disorder. It’s about seeing the whole image, not just focusing on what appears negative.
Mr. J. journeyed through profound trauma, war, suicide, abandonment, enveloped in a space of loving care, so protected that he heard nothing of the chaos erupting around him. Because ayahuasca, when needed, knows how to build soundproof rooms in the heart of the jungle.
A young woman reconnected with her body and discovered the peace that arises when it’s not invaded by thought. That sense was so real, so complete, that not even the surrounding turmoil could disturb it. When the mental chatter silences, even the body’s reactivity fades.
Mr. Ar. felt the deep power of compassion and the healing necessity of protecting not only others but also himself.
Mr. P., who until then had interrogated the medicine like a judge, surrendered. He opened the door to the presence of his father’s influence, making space for an inheritance he had long rejected.
Ms. Ju., with her quiet strength, brought order and balance to the room. She cared not only for the other participants, but also for us, the facilitators. A woman in deep listening, who became a pillar.
Ms. Ai., after many elusive ceremonies, finally experienced a true opening and surrendered to the love of Pachamama. To support the love we give, we must be able to receive, and when what we receive is the feeling of universal love, the force it brings is pure. With that force, she held space during the crisis, becoming medicine herself.
Ms. H., still overwhelmed by the medicine’s effects, arrived at the circle trembling, afraid. She had felt violated, unprotected, vulnerable like a child, immobilized by the strength of the experience and the energetic intrusion. But as the talking stick passed from hand to hand, she began to realize: that sense of insecurity was already inside her. The crisis had simply awakened it. And now the real work could begin: not in the mind, but in the body. In the truth of emotion.
In that circle, we didn’t just speak of what had happened, we spoke of what binds us: the possibility of transforming violence into compassion, shame into responsibility, and isolation into kinship.
Ayahuasca had done her work: unmasking, shaking, revealing the shadows. She had also protected, generated strength, and invoked opportunities. Then it was the group, the temporary tribe born in that maloca, that completed the alchemy. They transformed the monster into a messenger. Reminded us that love is not just a feeling: it is a movement. A choice. A collective act.
And when we choose to stay, to listen, to embrace, then even hell has served its purpose.
The circle heals because it is alive. Because it is sincere. Because no one pretends to be a master. Here, each person is a mirror to the other. No one is alone. And all, in their own way, are healed.
From Chaos to Communion
In a safe, ritual, loving context, even what looks like destruction can become medicine. It is not a mistake to be denied, nor an adverse effect to be avoided.
How many times have we witnessed crises that, outside this container, would have been labeled as psychiatric illness, panic, or psychosis? Elsewhere, there might have been a straitjacket, a diagnosis, isolation. But here, in the jungle, in the heart of a protected ceremony, held by those who watch, listen, and know how to stay present, even the most incoherent scream can become a message. Even the darkest trembling can be welcomed as the body’s language calling for attention.
Crisis is not a mistake. And in this context, it is not just an individual process, but an opportunity for everyone present. It is human connection that transforms. It is the gaze that doesn’t judge, the hand that reaches out, the silence that listens. It is the temporary community born within ceremony, a fragile yet powerful tribe, that holds the pain and transmutes it into compassion. Into connection. Into shared awareness.
Ayahuasca is a catalyst for truth. And truth, in turn, is a catalyst for humanity, and thus, for community.
In a shamanic ceremony, we listen to the voice of life asking to be heard. And the answers don’t always arrive where or when we expect them. Sometimes they come from outside. Sometimes from others, from a leaf that falls at just the right moment, from a message on a facilitator’s shirt. The medicine keeps speaking, even when we think her song has ended, in dreams, in words, in a look.
Here at Paojilhuasca, an ayahuasca ceremony doesn’t end with dawn. It doesn’t close with the final icaros. The true ceremony, the one that allows vision to become healing, crisis to become language, chaos to become form, continues in the circle the next day, when voices open and souls reflect each other.
That circle, the talking circle, is much more than a space to share. It is the living continuation of the medicine. A sacred space where what happened can rise from the body, travel through the throat, vibrate in sound, and be received. In that circle, the story is returned to consciousness.
And when a critical experience emerges, it can be transformed into a story that becomes increasingly digestible, by putting words to what was once only symbol or terror. In that moment, when someone realizes they can speak, that they can name the shadow, the true therapeutic act is born.
It is in that passage, from darkness to eloquence, from dissociation to presence, that the medicine completes its work.
This is why it is essential to keep the process alive. To recognize that the opening gifted to us does not close when the ceremony ends. That sensitivity is not weakness, but power. That the body, nature, relationships… continue to be tools for growth and healing.
Life is generous. It constantly offers us signs. Nature speaks to us incessantly, if we remain in listening, if we remain open. If we allow even chaos to become teaching, then every event, even the most difficult, transforms.
There is no break that cannot give rise to understanding. No darkness that, if welcomed, cannot become light.
This is the work we do: an invisible and tangible art, multidimensional and profoundly human. A work that does not stop at the serving of the plant, but embraces preparation, protection, translation, and integration. Helping each participant remain with what has emerged, without rushing to fix it, through nervous system regulation and shared reflection, allowing the echo of the night to find language, rhythm, breath.
It is a collective work that weaves together shamanic, medical, psychological, somatic, ritual, and soul-based knowledge. It is a living tapestry that takes form through every individual who passes through and is transformed.
And so, from this maloca deep in the jungle, waves are sent out. Inner movements that become gestures, relationships, new possibilities. And every personal transformation becomes a seed, carried by each of us into the world, bearing fruit far beyond where it began.