The 21 Days before Ayahuasca

Prep, expectations, experiences and the ultimate surrender

23 days before I was to travel to get to the Ayahuasca ceremonies venue, I was undergoing a sound healing session at The Lotus, Mumbai (the 2020-21 pandemic forced the Mumbai centre to close shop but the original Bangalore centre still stands tall).

For the hour-long session, all I had to do was to lie down on the floor, with my eyes closed, while the renowned and experienced Sound Healer played her singing bowls, gongs and other unique instruments near or over my chakras – engaging with what only she could see with her honed eyes and senses.

I was enjoying the sounds, the feelings in my body, the emotions ebbing and flowing through me, the occasional tears streaming down the sides of my face. When the session came to a close, I felt more peace than I did before. I enjoyed the sound bath and thanked the healer.

She, on the other hand, seemed agitated and alarmed (WTF!?).

I was taken aback when she very passionately warned me about my lower chakras being completely blocked. In her words, she had struggled to work on my lower chakras throughout (root, sacral, solar plexus chakras – linked to grounding, security, survival, identity, sexuality, confidence etc.) whereas my upper chakras (ajna and crown) were wide open!

She looked so harrowed, which in turn scared the shit out of me, talking about what a mess I was in. She knew of my upcoming Ayahuasca ceremonies, and she warned me categorically in words that didn’t really make sense to me at the time “If your lower chakras are not balanced and if you don’t urgently begin the process of grounding, you will fly off to another realm and won’t get your bearings back on this planet!”

In Hindi “Tum urrh jaogi, wapas nahi aa paogi!”

Scared and confused the shit out of me.

What do these words even mean?!?

I was so flustered at this outburst by a healer, who has decades of experience working with energy bodies and chakras and sound healing. What the hell!

She obviously messed up in how she delivered the verdict to me in that horrid scary way rather than having a rational calm conversation with me about it, explaining everything to me in lay-language and suggesting ways to “ground” myself etc.

But fret not, within the next 24 hours I got an explanation and solutions through well-wishers and angels in human disguise.

After the session I, obviously shaken up, quietly left for home. All the hysterics playing on my naive half-informed mind.

The next day, I was meant to go back to The Lotus to attend a sacred geometry workshop I had signed up for many days ago. On my way there I got to share an auto-rickshaw ride with their resident auto-writer Kalki.

Kalki basically, in my understanding and experience, is a channeller. Through meditation and adjusting her focus, she taps into a Higher Power/ Source Wisdom (whatever you may want to call it), and using her non-primary writing hand writes/ channels answers to questions her clients ask (these questions are written down in advance on a neat sheet of paper, numbered from 1 to whatever, the answers are then channelled and written down by her in the same order in handwriting barely recognised by her as its her non-dominant hand she writes them down with). She essentially steps aside, her personality steps aside while she channels the material, as she writes. She retains some meaning behind the words that are written down. It happens right in front of your eyes, the entire process – it’s fascinating.

Post the session, she invites you to sit with her to go over the answers. In this mode, she is no longer the channel, she is back to being the human who can almost recognise her handwriting and almost all the meaning behind it.

I was flabbergasted when I did my session with her. It blew my damn mind. You see, I did go from being a totally closed-off supremely cynical non-believer to becoming exceptionally open-minded over the course of 3-4 years, but I still carried a healthy amount of skepticism with me.

So, during my session, when I had written down questions about the role this person or that person is meant to play in my life, Kalki in her channeller avatar/ flow, asked to see a picture of the person I had named in the list of questions and she wrote down information about them that even I hadn’t known, some deeply personal stuff that was revealed to me by the person in question themselves later. So, it wasn’t random trickery! It was all f*****g real! WTF! Love it! This world has been blowing my mind since 2017!

Anyway, coming back to the day after my sound healing session, when I happened to share a ride with Kalki, the auto-writer (with whom I was gradually becoming friendly). Kalki happened to sense that I was ‘off’ that afternoon, I seemed worried or shaken up. I guess I just needed the opportunity to share with a sympathetic person. So I burst instantaneously, explaining what had happened the previous day after the sound-healing session and how flustered I felt by the healer’s unhinged words of warning. I expressed my fear and confusion and that I felt rather alarmed and lost, with just 22 more days to go for the Ayahuasca ceremonies, which I was preparing for already with my dieta.

She was so loving and kind and asked me to overlook the tone and manner of delivery of the message, and just pay attention to the wisdom behind the message. She urged me to calm down and focus on ‘grounding myself’ for the next 21 days.

We reached the 1000 Petals centre and Archana was there, as usual, managing the place. We three sat, while I narrated what had happened the previous day and brought Archana up to speed. Archana was so wonderful and kind and apologetic about the visiting Healer’s behavior and outburst. She said she would speak with her about her bedside manner for sure. I had another 3 sound healing sessions booked with her in advance, but I decided to cut out her chaotic energy from my life till after the Ayahuasca ceremonies were over.

Anyway, more important is what happened afterwards.

The ladies, lovingly sat me down and held my hand and told me that I’d be okay. They explained to me what the healer had meant to say. Basically, from what I understand and express, your lower chakras ground you to this reality, to this body, to the earth. Whereas, the upper chakras open you up to the Cosmos, to Source, to Higher Powers. Naturally, there needs to be a balance between all 7 chakras for a healthy body and mind. Hence, if the lower chakras are blocked energetically while the upper ones are wide open and receptive, you will tend to fly off into the unknown, to have your head in the clouds so to speak, especially with the ingestion of plant medicine like Ayahuasca. You may access insane amounts of Source information, higher inter-dimensional truths, and almost face losing your will to exist in this realm as a human who needs to face this particular form of 3D reality.

Hence, “urrh jaogi, wapas nahi aa paogi!” (“you’ll fly off, not being able to come back down to earth!”)

She wanted to warn me about losing all sense of reality, losing my link with this life, body and reality, losing my sanity possibly.

Even so, my dear ladies, Aarti & Kalki, lovingly suggested a few activities I could do to ‘ground myself’ in the coming days, before I would sit in Ayahuasca ceremonies. They really comforted me, even though I still felt very shaken up and clueless.

Kalki prescribed simply spending a small amount of time each day, preferably morning, walking barefoot on mud/sand/earth.

Aarti suggested this 21-minute, 21 day meditative exercise – it is meant to ground you firmly into the body, your reality, Mother Earth.

21-minute routine – 3 different meditations for 7 minutes each, in succession. Fascinating stuff.

For the entire 21-minute duration it is suggested you sit on the ground (a yoga mat on the floor of your home will do, but sitting directly on the earth would be super-fantastic). For the first 7 minutes you sit crossed legged on the ground, raise your arms, palms facing up parallel to the sky, elbows bent. You pump your arms up and back down, while exhaling a guttural “hoo” sound that has to come straight from the belly, a deep primal sound, as loud as you feel comfortable with. So, one deep “hoo” and arms pump upwards, then down back to shoulder level while palms still face up, the next deep “hoo” and the arms pump upwards, then back again at shoulder level. (Kind of like the “raising the roof” dance move, hehe)

You do this for the first 7 minutes. Its so so intense and powerful. In my mind’s eye and understanding, I am basically pumping air into the feeble fire of my lower chakras, making the red flame of the root chakra growing bigger and bigger.

Once the first exercise is done for 7 minutes straight, you don’t stop, no breaks, you move on to the next one.

The next 7 minutes, you talk gibberish, no recognisable words, as loudly as you feel comfortable with. Non-stop gibberish, 7 minutes straight.

Finally, for the last 7 minutes, you sit in absolute silence.

There! That’s your 21 minute grounding exercise. Done for 21 days only. Yes, you are not needed to continue for even a day longer. Do it sincerely and you are only required to do it for 21 days.

I cannot fully express my gratitude at having received this information and guidance from the ladies. I followed their advice to the T.

For the next 21 days I did exactly what was suggested. Spending a few minutes walking barefoot at the beach during my morning walks there. And the 21-minute meditative exercise I describe above.

The kind of sounds, emotions, feelings, memories that emerged during the exercises were needless to say unexpected. I cried, I expressed so much rage during the gibberish phase, so much mockery, taunting and sarcasm in my tone as I spoke gibberish, so much rage (the rage made sense to me because of the many obvious themes and events of my life, obvious to my conscious mind, but yes the whopping volume of rage there was was a bit surprising as well).

Also there emerged the tone and emotion of ‘desperate begging’. I had no conscious idea of what this was, meaning that I had no conscious recognition of this emotion. I think my Ego had been protecting me from feeling that I had ever been a vulnerable beggar in front of anyone before.

I would sound like I was ‘begging’ someone for love, for affection, for forgiveness, for belonging, for a place at the table, for validation, while I ranted in gibberish. This is truly fascinating, the more I think about it.

Of course, at first, I felt so silly doing the “hoo hoo” like a weird monkey, even though it was in the privacy of my own home. I felt stupid & sheepish talking in gibberish too. But thankfully I persisted because I was shit-scared of all the “not being able to come back to earth” stuff which to be honest was still not fully understood by me at the time.

As the 21 days went by, and I devotedly continued the prescribed meditation, I kept discovering a deeper silence at the end (the last 7 minutes), a feeling of ‘lightness’ like never before.

It is no accident that the day after the prescribed 21 days came to a close, I had to set off to the venue (an overnight stop before I headed to a remote location outside of Maharashtra) for my Ayahuasca retreat.

This whole journey to Ayahuasca has been a series of events/ accidents/ epiphanies that inspire goosebumps and grateful tears along the way. The Sound healer freaked out on me, Day N-24.

I shared my confusion and experience, Day N-23.

I started the 21 day Meditation, Day N-22.

I set off to the Ayahuasca retreat, Day N-1.

Bloody brilliant isn’t it?!?

(next post – my first ayahuasca ceremony)