My Date with Ayahuasca Part 2

Content by: 180 Nutrition

[ebook]By Guy Lawrence

“When a thing becomes indispensable it’s time to give it up.” ― Marty Rubin

Letting go

You can read ‘My Date with Ayahuasca Part 1’ HERE.

14 days out I started to prepare myself for what lay ahead. I’m told that the food and mental preparation is as important as the ayahuasca ceremony itself and it’s all part of ‘letting go’.

I decided not to really tell anyone that I was going to do this until after the ceremony had finished. I was having a hard enough time starting to deal with “Shit! Am I really going to do this?” kinda self talk, and I didn’t want other peoples opinion stacked up on top of it (whether they were positive or not).

Have you seen the movie Fight Club? First rule of Fight Club… don’t tell anyone about Fight Club! Ayahuasca was beginning to feel the same. Was it a global underground movement enlightening people as we speak?? For all I knew, it could be going on in my own neighbourhood! Clueless to what I was in for, I sometimes wondered if I should step outside and look for the smoke signals to tell me what to do next!! 

Fortunately I had my two best mates on the case too, and between us all we came up with a simple strategy… Don’t break the rules!!!

The Journey Continues…

As there were three of us, I decided to set up a simple 3 way text conversation on our iPhones so we could text each other any useful information, pictures or recipes etc, as I was in Australia and Joe & Mike in the UK. We used the app’ Whatsapp.

Naturally, I called it ‘The Journey’.

vegan dietThis helped big time as it kept us on track and reminded us that we weren’t doing the vegan diet and ‘letting go’ alone. We also had some fun with it too and some nights we cracked up with laughter which was great therapy leading into it all. As you can see by the pic on the right, we were no vegan connoisseurs!

The Ayahuasca Vegan Diet Rules

Jokes aside, we were taking the preparations seriously. No matter what my dietary beliefs are, who am I to argue with a tradition that has been practiced a certain way for thousands of years!

Note: These posts are my OWN PERSONAL experiences. I am in NO-WAY suggesting anyone else should do this. Ayahuasca has been the biggest adventure for me to date, and I’m simply sharing that adventure for those who want to know my experience. I have been asked continuously about it since I drank, so these posts are for those who want to know more. I captured my feelings and thoughts in short videos before, during & after the ceremony. I’m sharing them with each post for those that want to know more, so you can get feel for what I went through. It’s illegal to possess/traffic Ayahuasca within Australia.

 

I eat pretty clean anyway, but this will give you an idea of what I did.

14 days out:-

  • I stopped exercising. I decided to do this to slow down my metabolism so I wouldn’t require as much food, and also my fist step to ‘letting go’
  • I eliminated all meats except fish
  • I have very little bread, grains, gluten & sugar in my diet, but they were gone
  • All alcohol went (even though I only have a glass of red)
  • ALL dairy went. (Yes, including my whey based 180 protein superfood)
  • I never eat processed packaged foods, takeaways, or processed fats EVER! So this was not a problem for me

Note: If you eat a typical western diet and have sugar, gluten, processed meats, fast foods, packaged foods etc, I would start one month out, not 14 days. Give your body time to adjust. It is detoxing and the more time you give it the better.

7 days out:-

  • No more caffeine (This was tough as I love a coffee)
  • No more fish or fish oil capsules (I take them daily for omega 3’s)

So what did I eat?

  • Bucket fulls of vegetables! Some cooked and lots raw. I also ate sweet potato
  • A little fruit. I kept the ratio daily to about 20% fruit to 80% veg. Why? I didn’t want to increase my fructose intake (common mistake when juicing)
  • 180 Vegan Protein Superfood
  • Greens powder supplement
  • Mixed nuts and nut butter
  • I kept my coconut oil intake high and cut back 2 days out. I did this for my main source of fuel as I’m a big believer in saturated fats
  • I also had lentils

Essentially I combined the foods above in anyway I could. Glamorous? No… Effective? Very! I also made something of what resembled vegan chilli con-carne (mainly veg), which I lived off for two days!

Pic left: Airplane food & a typical breakfast!

I wasn’t going to become a ‘carbivore’ that’s for sure! But I wasn’t going to try and turn into Jamie Oliver either. It was whatever was practical and got me through… Simple! The blender was my best friend. I even took a small portable blender with me to Hong Kong so I could make smoothies which consisted of: Coconut milk, water, a greens powder supplement, half an avocado, scoop of 180 Vegan protein powder and fresh berries. I had four that day and this was a life saver!

Pic right: Being a vegan in Hong Kong was no picnic!

With hindsight, I would have left for Europe earlier, but that was something I couldn’t dwell on and had to play it out the way it was.

Not only was I letting go of the attachments I had with the food I was used to, I was also working on just slowing down and trying to be present. The problem was, I was allowing a little self-talk to creep in.  I could feel my body changing from the diet and the travelling/jet-lag and my defences were dropping, which let room creep in for doubt and fear. A distant sound at first like a buzz on a TV. You don’t really notice it until someone points it out to you, then the buzz won’t go away! Well the fear was definitely starting to buzz, and the more I pretended like it wasn’t there, the louder it got!

By the time I got to Europe I was two days out from drinking ayahuasca. I was exhausted, hungry, detoxing and slowly losing my battle with the ‘buzz on the TV’. Simply put, I was shit scared and beginning to doubt I could even go through with it! To be continued… Click Here for My Date With Ayahuasca Part 3.

180 Nutrition

This article was curated by 180 Nutrition who were founded in March 2010 with the goal to offer the very best in natural health supplements and resources. The passionate team are aligned with leading health and wellness professionals including nutritionists, naturopaths, functional medicine and exercise specialists. They regularly connect with... Read More
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