How I reclaimed my power as an Entrepreneur through Ayahuasca Plant Medicine
Ayahuasca re-activated my drive to create and injected confidence into my life’s work.
I feel honored to have sat with alunahealingcenter.com/- and to share in the art of the ceremony they’ve created. Oh, and p.s. their ceremonial plant medicine is 100% legal and is given as a religious sacrament in the U.S.
“Pick up your drum. You’ve been living in the world without an instrument.” My Cherokee ancestor said to me in my vision.
I knew her message was not just about a physical instrument. She was instructing me to fully step into my life’s work.
As my hands sat resting on the hand drum, I waited for inspiration to be sparked into motion.
Yet, I felt frozen in place. Knowing it was a representation of how I’d felt in other areas of life. The medicine was pulsing through my body in full force — the Sacred insight was propelling me into my own truth.
I saw myself as a little girl, attempting to learn piano. Too frustrated with the newness of not understanding the chords.
As I switched to guitar, I got too frustrated with my own raw fingers and set that instrument down too.
For so long, I’d only stuck with the things that felt immediately easy.
I knew my own fear of embarrassing myself had held me back.
My dad was a musician, who played every instrument. But I never saw him as a beginner. Only an expert, who seemingly had no struggle to be excellent. While I struggled a lot. Primarily my struggle was with self compassion for being a beginner.
As a little one, feeling like a failure, I’d decided:
If I’m not excellent right away, Ill never be good enough.
Only spend my time on the things I’m naturally gifted at day one.
What the medicine showed me next, was my father as a young teenager — learning and fumbling as he learned. This insight changed something in me. It shifted what I’d believed about failure.
I could see that being new at something, and being “bad at it” didn’t mean I was failing. It didn’t mean I should give up. All the sudden, I keep trying again and again until I caught on.
As I set the drum to the side…
I felt this wave of permission wash through me.
Permission to be new at something.
Permission to fumble.
Permission to be seen, even in a group.
As my hands began to pulse on the drum, I missed beats and struggled to find my rhythm.
I noticed the familiar inner critic telling me “just stop trying”.
Yet this time the voice softened, and I saw the face of my father.
In a dark room, he sat with one light focused on his guitar strings as he struggled through finding the transition between chords.
I’d only experienced him as a pro, and missed all his years of learning how to find mastery.
All these years, with his example in my mind, I’d held the expectation that I had to be excellent right off the bat.
And this was the first time I’d seen he’d struggled as well.
This new perspective opened up awareness in me of how afraid I was.
Afraid of failing as an entrepreneur.
Afraid of failing as a business partner.
Afraid of failing as a wife and a future mother.
Afraid of stepping into every new avenue that life is currently calling me into.
I felt my fear unfreezing in my spine as I wept.
Just a month before, I’d sat in my first Ayahuasca Ceremony with Aluna Healing.
My business partner, Edmond and I were at a standstill in the company we were co-creating together.
We feel called to re-awaken connection that transforms lives.
And I asked the medicine to show me what was blocking me from bringing our vision into reality.
From the moment I’d arrived I felt in awe of the way Alex, the medicine woman stood in her power.
I saw her as bold, strong. and courageous.
She challenged the men to look even deeper into themselves, lovingly coaxing each person into finding more authentic clarity.
It was beautiful.
Several hours into the medicine, I saw her tending to the fireplace and shyly asked her to come sit with me.
I poured appreciation on to her for showing me an example what it looked like to fully be in her power as a woman.
She looked me straight in the eyes and gently said: I’m a reflection of you.
I could feel the inflection point hit me, and I curled up into a ball as I pulled away,
I couldn’t receive it.
My face fell over into my hands as I started crying.
Seeing my rejection of my own gifts and feeling my heart break.
I was seeing parts of myself that it’d been rejecting.
It was not bliss.
It was pure discomfort.
After hours of being stuck in a loop.
I had to look at the truth that I’ve been coasting in my work.
The offering I’ve been sharing with the world is only a sliver of what I am capable of.
I’d been living in my zone of competence.
Too afraid to break out of my comfort zone.
Too afraid of my zone of genius.
And this felt heart breaking.
I knew I’d been limiting my own potential by hitting upper limits.
I would get a wave of creative energy, start talking to people about the idea, feel alignment in my heart, bask in the excitement in my belly, and I’d begin planning — then fill my time with unrelated distractions.
In order to birth my life’s work, I needed to own the divine gifts within me.
I felt reinvigorated.
Alive.
and Inspired.
The first night of ceremony, began with the foundation necessary to step into my own gifts.
It is safe to have needs and wants.
It’s safe for me to receive in this world.
Asking for support is safe.
These were my lessons of the medicine.
Historically, I believe that if I addressed everyone else’s needs before my own, then that was safe.
I felt I had to be alone in order to get my needs met.
So I’d been isolating myself.
Oh, I need something? I’m going to go off on my own to take care of that.
As I danced with the medicine, I signed and enjoying the bliss of surrender.
I was breathing deeply and massaging my body with so much love.
Feeling my skin and breathing into the experience of being alive.
Then breathing into the discomfort as it came up in response to no longer blocking the world around me.
I felt the grief expressed by the tears from the women surrounding me.
I felt their fear.
I felt their release.
As I sighed, I felt their relief set in.
My contribution of bliss was alchemizing the density in the space.
And I felt my historical pattern to hide my joy, amidst others pain dissolve.
I’d hidden my optimism, to fit into the world of for too long.
I’d hidden my radiance, trying to belong.
I’d hidden
Receiving is not just about asking for what I need, it’s about receiving the entire energetic experience of what I feel and not blocking it.
Feeling what comes up for me in a scenario, and my response to the collective is true receptivity in the world.
Feeling the world around me, and feeling my response to it — is feeling.
I finally gathered up the courage to ask for support, requesting a hug from Elena / their apprentice.
I’d needed a hug so many times I hadn’t asked for one.
I laid my head on her lap, noticing the tension in my body and choosing into soften into being held.
It was the support I’d needed and couldn’t find the courage to ask for.
Even though I didn’t know this person very well, there was so much love to be received — and I allowed it all in.
I bent forward resting my forehead in my hands, bowing to Mother Aya for the humbling experience she was gifting me.
I felt so alive, breathing, sighing, and moaning into the pleasure of enjoying the experience of being human.
I felt awe.
Complete reverence.
I stood up with my left hand on my chest and right hand on my belly, and took a deep breath and sigh as by bare feet met the cold stone floor.
And the essence of my power hit me.
My arms shook and my hands began to flicker, as if the movement was turning on the electricity in my body again.
Feeling the energy to create coming back into my fingers.
I’d reactivated my own electricity again, so I could bring my gifts into the world in full force.
As I walked through the ceremony space, my feet kissed the earth beneath me, and I felt like a goddess with every step.
I feel honored to have sat with alunahealingcenter.com/- and to share in the art of the ceremony they’ve created. Oh, and p.s. their ceremonial plant medicine is 100% legal and is given as a religious sacrament in the U.S.