What happens when a sacred jungle medicine finds its way into the concrete corridors of the West? That was the big question explored in this eye-opening panel on "The Rise of La Madre Ayahuasca Beyond the Amazon."
I had the honour of joining a stellar lineup of thinkers, artists, researchers, and seekers to map how ayahuasca is transforming lives far beyond its native Amazonian roots. As Steve McDonnell, our facilitator and founder of Australia's psychedelic research org PRISM, framed it:
As the panel kicked off, we were reminded of how seismic cultural change tends to ripple in waves across generations. Ayahuasca, once hidden deep in the Amazon, now finds itself at the centre of a global cultural shift. This isn't just a botanical curiosity; it's a spiritual catalyst knocking on the doors of the modern world. Steve McDonnell's comment came as a frame for the entire conversation lens through which we might understand why this ancient medicine is surfacing now, when so many are burnt out, disconnected, and in search of meaning.
It's tempting to imagine the global spread of ayahuasca as a natural evolutionary response to the modern paradigm.
Steve's words landed with weight. You could feel the room collectively nodding, understanding that what we're seeing with ayahuasca is not accidental - it's a response to deep cultural hunger. If the modern paradigm has led us to separation, extraction, and isolation, ayahuasca offers a corrective - a return to relationship, to reciprocity, and to reverence for the Earth and each other.
Steve's words landed with weight. You could feel the room collectively nodding, understanding that what we're seeing with ayahuasca is not accidental - it's a response to deep cultural hunger.
My First Time: Breaking Through in the Jungle
Like many of the panelists, my first deep experience came in 2006, in the heart of the Peruvian jungle with maestro Percy Garcia. That moment changed everything:
There's something ineffable that happens when the jungle holds you. The Amazon doesn't just host the medicine - it is the medicine. The sounds, the heat, the density of life all around you - it's as if you're being reabsorbed into something ancient and alive. When I first drank ayahuasca under the canopy with maestro Percy Garcia, I wasn't just ingesting a brew; I was stepping into a living consciousness.
Being surrounded by that web of life and feeling the ayahuasca opening me up and connecting me to it - that was something profoundly transformative.
That connection wasn't conceptual - it was cellular. I didn't read about interdependence; I felt it move through me. The ayahuasca stripped away the boundaries that modern life had built up and revealed something deeply familiar: the truth that we belong to the Earth, not the other way around. That realization shaped my life from that moment on.
From that moment forward, I knew this was more than a personal experience. It was a call to service - a relationship with something older, wiser, and intensely alive.
It wasn't just visions or purging. It was a visceral, spiritual remembering of our interdependence with the Earth. And from that has come a mission: to honour this medicine and help others walk the path with integrity.
Stories from the Circle
Everyone on the panel brought their own sacred brushstroke to the picture.
Katya Honor shared how ayahuasca pulled her back from the edge:
Katya's story hit a tender chord. Trauma, disconnection, and emotional numbness are so common in our fast-paced, productivity-obsessed world that they often go unnoticed. But when ayahuasca cracks that numbness open, the floodgates of emotion can return in surprising ways. For Katya, the transformation wasn't immediate fireworks, but a quiet reawakening to empathy.
The next day, I felt like I saw someone being kind, and I cried. I could feel other people for the first time in years.
That one moment - being moved to tears by someone's kindness - speaks volumes about the depth of healing these ceremonies can offer. It's not always about cosmic revelations; often it's about rediscovering the simple, beautiful truth of human connection. From that place, Katya began creating art that channels the spirit of these experiences, allowing others to see what can't be said.
That moment led her down a new path, becoming a visionary artist whose work now helps others process what words cannot hold. Her healing became her medium.
That moment led her to become a visionary artist, translating the ineffable into brushstrokes and colour.
Benjamin Mudge, who has lived with bipolar disorder, spoke to the clinical and spiritual transformation he experienced:
Benjamin's experience brought in a clinical yet soulful dimension. He had lived through the limitations of conventional psychiatry, where the goal often becomes management rather than healing. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he had tried every tool the system had offered - only to find it insufficient and sometimes harmful. But ayahuasca was a different kind of medicine: one that didn't just treat symptoms, but revealed the root of suffering and lit the path back to wholeness.
Since then, I've had a balanced brain chemistry, being off psychiatric meds for eight years... The primary side effect of ayahuasca is a spiritual awakening.
That "side effect" is no accident. Benjamin's story illustrates how healing isn't merely chemical - it's spiritual, emotional, and existential. Ayahuasca offered him a way to stabilize, not by numbing his mind, but by expanding his understanding of himself. His transformation challenges the very way we think about mental illness and points to new, integrative possibilities.
His testimony echoed a quiet truth we all felt - sometimes, what Western medicine pathologizes, these sacred plants transmute.
Not Just Visions: Deeper Dimensions
One of the big myths we tackled was that ayahuasca is all about the visuals. That couldn't be further from the truth.
In the West, we've become obsessed with the visuals - the cosmic fireworks and swirling mandalas. There's an almost cinematic expectation attached to psychedelics now, especially with the rising popularity of DMT and ayahuasca. But true healing is not found in spectacle. It's found in depth, in stillness, in that subtle shift from fear to openness, from dissociation to feeling.
We're forgetting that these medicines allow us to feel, the visions are just the waiting room.
Ayahuasca's most potent work often happens beyond the visual field - in the gut, in the breath, in the heart. The visions may act as signposts, but they are not the destination. The real alchemy is what happens when we drop into our bodies and reconnect to what's been hidden or frozen inside us. That's where lasting healing begins.
Beyond the spectacle is the somatic, the heart-level reweaving of connection. It's not what you see, it's what you remember about being human.
Some people drink for years and don't see visions. That doesn't mean nothing's happening. The heart opens. Trauma moves. Connection is restored. This is sacred work that goes far beyond fireworks.
Culture, Capitalism, and the Clash
Anthropologist Bia Labate dropped some real gems, reminding us that globalization is not a neutral term:
When Bia spoke, she brought the fire of scholarship with the clarity of lived experience. She challenged the panel - and the audience - to think critically about how ayahuasca is being introduced to the world outside its traditional roots. Globalization often sounds neutral or even positive, but it frequently comes with the flattening of meaning and the extraction of sacred knowledge from its cultural context.
It's spreading, but globalized as capitalism? That's not ayahuasca.
Her point cut to the heart of the matter: if we package ayahuasca into a market-friendly product, stripped of its cultural and spiritual roots, we risk turning it into a commodity rather than a sacrament. It's not just about access - it's about integrity. Bia reminded us that reverence and responsibility must guide the medicine's journey into the modern world.
This isn't Coca-Cola. This is culture, cosmology, and communion. And if we strip the roots from the medicine, we risk losing the very thing that makes it sacred.
She challenged us to consider what exactly is being "exported" when ayahuasca leaves the jungle. Are we carrying its full depth, or just appropriating the outer forms?
Katya added a layer from the art world:
Katya pointed out the tension between the visionary and the institutional. In the mainstream art world, there's often a discomfort - if not outright dismissal - of anything overtly spiritual. Visionary artists like Katya walk a delicate line between expressing profound truths and navigating a culture that prefers irony over sincerity, and commodification over transformation.
"The art world doesn't really want to know too much about us... But corporations support spectacular things that people want. And people actually do want divine inspiration in art." - Katya Honor.
She highlighted how the growing appetite for the sacred in public life is breaking through, not despite corporate structures, but occasionally through them. Her work stands as a reminder that art is one of the most potent vehicles for integrating the ineffable. When words fail, a painting can carry the energy of an entire ceremony.
Her art - infused with spirit - acts like a transmission, reminding us that beauty and truth can still punch through even the thickest veil of consumer culture.
So maybe we're breaking through the cracks of the mainstream.
Prohibition and Price Tags
One of the challenges in the West is prohibition. Because it's still technically illegal in many countries, ceremonies go underground - and that drives up costs.
Ayahuasca's legal status is murky in many parts of the world, and that murk breeds fear. Instead of fostering safety, prohibition drives good practitioners underground and makes space for dodgy operators. This tension creates an unsafe atmosphere - not because of the medicine itself, but because of the systems around it.
Prohibition is actually counterproductive. It creates fear and makes it hard for facilitators to operate with integrity.
Benjamin spoke to a frustration many in the community share: we want to do this work responsibly, but the law often stands in the way. Regulation that's rooted in care, not control, could help protect both practitioners and participants. Until then, a grey market continues to operate in the shadows, with people risking legal trouble to heal.
The irony is thick - while the medicine helps people heal, the system criminalizes its caretakers. It's time for mature dialogue and responsible frameworks, not fear.
And when ceremonies become expensive, expectations skyrocket. People chase visionary experiences like it's a psychedelic Disneyland. But healing doesn't work on demand.
What Comes Next?
So where do we go from here? Ayahuasca is no quick fix. It's not a trend. It's a teacher. And as it continues to root in new soils, we need to approach it with reverence, education, and a whole lot of humility.
As Bia reminded us:
As the conversation wound down, Bia left us with a final reflection that felt like a guiding star. Her words urged us to think beyond the substance itself and consider the entire framework through which we engage with it. Ayahuasca is not just a chemical - it's an emissary from a worldview radically different from the one we've inherited in the West.
Ayahuasca is about deconstructing our paradigms. It's about learning different cognition, values, and culture.
This isn't just about swapping one therapy for another - it's about rethinking what healing even means. Bia's comment invited us to step outside our familiar logic and learn from Indigenous ways of knowing. To truly receive what ayahuasca offers, we have to be willing to unlearn, to listen, and to reorient ourselves to a world filled with spirit, reciprocity, and mystery.
If we're going to embrace this medicine, we must also be willing to question our maps. Ayahuasca doesn't just open doors - it invites us to rebuild the house.
La Madre is rising. Not to conquer the West, but to whisper through the cracks in its concrete. To soften hearts, reconnect us to the Earth, and help us remember what we've forgotten.
And that, mates, is a journey worth taking.