Hayakwaska* vine for Troy: free-handed and one week into healing with room to grow and add. Honoring the massive transformative experience that this client had with consuming the medicine, particularly as a man who served in the military.
*Hayakwaska is the Kichwa name for the Quechua word of Ayahuasca. There is a powerful narrative from the short documentary Waska: the Forest is my Family by Nina Gualinga, a Kichwa-speaking member of the Sarayaku community in the Ecuadorian Amazon, who names the damages rendered from extractive commodification of Indigenous ancestral lands and superficial spiritual tourism that has become linked to the modern exploitations of Ayahuasca.
Aya means the soul of a dead person, skeleton, or corpse.
Hayak is a short form of Hayakwaska and directly means bitter – ‘bitter vine’
Ayata Upina is to drink the soul of a dead person.
Hayakata Upina refers to drinking Hayakwaska.
I have known many people who have participated in some form of Ayahuasca ceremony and have come away from it with an entirely new / restored / remembering way of being. The more real healing, the better! It is important to understand the history and context of where and how plant medicines of this magnitude have come to be here, and how we can all be better educated on those subjects to support and respect their origins, especially if we feel attracted to becoming acquainted with their power. This knowledge IS the healing. It reveals everything that we are conditioned to accept, and what we have been severed from.
I am always observing a great need for ritual participation with plants in these ways and especially during times of imbalance where disconnect from deeper environmental rhythms is rampant.
