Ayahuasca Talks

Responding to the Darkness Within to Live in a More Loving State

This special episode features a discussion about exploring and shedding the darkness within to achieve a more joyful and loving existence. Rebecca Hayden describes experiences of confronting and letting go of dark energies while in different states after medicine experiences. This is a discussion that took place with Michael Kokal in 2020 and delves into the possibilities of what can be achieved in meditative, sleep and hypnogogic states involving profound transformational confrontations with dark entities and the work that is achieved through doing this. This is also a discussion about the everyday experiences we have in this life that can be described as 'dark' and how doing this work involves letting go of these kinds of thoughts and behaviours which helps us to feel lighter and happier.

Visit www.rebeccahayden.com for more Ayahuasca Integration content.

Healing Through the Eye of the Storm with Dan Motoc & Rebecca Hayden

This discussion is about healing from the inside out through challenging times. We talk about outer reflections of things that we need to heal - issues such as control which is coming up a lot now. We discuss moving through trauma into empowerment. Other topics such as shadow work and empathy come up as we discuss our own healing journeys and tools that anyone can use to help them through these difficult times. We end by emphasizing the power of humour and harnessing this to help us move through our healing journey.

Visit www.rebeccahayden.com for more Ayahuasca Integration content.

Discussion with Katherine Coder

Katherine shares some of her story and how she came to practice personal sovereignty. We discuss the struggles and gifts that have come with this unprecedented time and share the lessons that most resonate because of it. We touch on things like 'psychic attacks', give everyday examples and reveal how even this kind of experience can make us stronger. We talk about our experience with depression and how it helped us heal. We discuss how we make decisions, conscious and unconscious agreements, personal power, responsibility and surrender.

Discussion with Angela Benck

Angela and I discuss connecting with inner wisdom to make sense of conflicting in–formation. Inner knowing always helps us recognize truth. We offer ideas of ways to connect with what is ‘yes’ or what our own truth feels like in our body or in our experience. We discuss how this is an exciting time as it is an invitation to grow beyond where we’re at now. We liken this time to the great detox and what we often experience as the Herxheimer reaction when we’re making progress. We talk about the importance of joy and allowing ourselves to feel this as a means to take us to a healthier state. Learning and growing can be joyful. We can achieve accelerated growth if we embody the lessons and principles we offer our children. We agree on how powerful it is to focus on the things that make us feel good and inspired, how this improves our inner state, which reflects outward. When we focus on what we wish to unfold in our lives, we at times will come up against how we get in our way, and this is the work of the healing path to achieve those things. We talk about the fact that when we aren’t ready to do this kind of work that the opportunities will continue to present themselves in our lives until we are ready or until we do. We talk about defensiveness, what we can learn from it and how we can respond in better ways that lead to better outcomes.

Visit www.rebeccahayden.com for more Ayahuasca Integration content.

Discussion with Shannon Hernandez of Great Spirit Farm

Shannon & I discuss our current social polarization as an opportunity for us to confront and heal some underlying issues that have impacted our social experience for a long time. We talk about control stemming from fear and the conditioning legacy that is revealed through typical childhood and parenting experiences. We provide examples of how we can change this and how we can approach this time in a way that may help us to bring about a more harmonious existence. We talk about labels, how dehumanizing they can be and how much more we are than these limiting descriptions of a whole person.

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Discussion with Luc Van Poelje of Psychedelic Insights

We discuss our experiences of inner & outer conflict and the opportunities that lie in the provoking experiences all around us today. We talk about how psychedelic and spiritual experiences reveal to us that our inner experience or state reflects outwards and how we manifest opportunities to learn, sometimes in the form of events or people in our lives who challenge us in uncomfortable ways. Luc talks about fear as the driver of all aggression and how this understanding may bring us closer to responding in healthier ways to controversial events. As always we talk about the power of love and how we continue to return to this wisdom to help us navigate difficult times.

Visit www.rebeccahayden.com for more Ayahuasca Integration content.

Discussion with Maya Abou Chedid

Maya and I discuss the healing process in these times of upheaval. We talk about upheaval and provocation as part of the healing process and an aspect of shamanic healing that we have experienced personally and that we see playing out in the world today. We discuss world events as seen through the lens of a healing process. We share our own journeys that involve trauma, victimhood and ultimately, choosing to stand in our power. We explore our relationship with power, recognizing where we're at with it and changing it to facilitate the emergence from victimhood into personal power. In this discussion we explore the topics of trauma, victimhood, free will, personal power & love.

Visit www.rebeccahayden.com for more Ayahuasca Integration content.

Discussion with John Folak Aka ’The Traveling Nobody’

Our discussion centres around things falling apart so that they can be recreated in a better way – the concept of rebirth playing out in our lives and in the integrative process. Instead of looking at depression as an illness, we explore the idea of seeing depression and other difficult states as an indicator or signal telling us that change is needed and underway. Depression is often a natural reaction to unhealthy experiences and events coming to a head. We talk about the integration process as becoming who we are and living authentically. We discuss practical situations we have encountered in our work life and how we applied what we learned with medicines to these experiences both in work interviews, in the workspace and ultimately choosing careers that reflect who we are and lend themselves to living an authentic life. We talk about the importance of allowing that inner voice and knowing to drive our experience rather than outside influences which have led us in directions that don’t always serve us well.

We discuss how we learn lessons along the way and become comfortable with ‘making mistakes’. We relate stories that illustrate how humour can assist us through these challenging learning experiences – a form of ‘educational entertainment’. We talk about the value of open curiosity and how everything that happens in life is a response to our intentions and where we’re at. Ultimately, being in a state of love is what will help us to manifest more positive experiences in our lives.

Visit www.rebeccahayden.com for more Ayahuasca Integration content.

Discussion with Jonathan Dickinson of Ceiba Ibogaine

Jonathan and Rebecca discuss different approaches to psychedelics: clinical, traditional and the many variations of these practices. Jonathan voices concerns about clinical set and setting and the implications of this with respect to the clinical approach to psychedelics and plant medicines. We talk about the idea of having a relationship with the medicines and how this concept may not be adopted by everyone. We agree that we’re all just finding our way with these phenomenal medicines and that one size does not fit all. We talk about how the DSM identifies mental conditions/illness decided based on a collection of symptoms, how this is now being questioned and how psychedelic medicines open us up to seeing these states and conditions differently and most importantly, what contributes to these unhealthy states. We talk about how psychedelics are often the beginning of us understanding ourselves better and how our life experiences and the way we live in the world has brought us to these unhealthy states of being. Instead of a miracle cure, although these experiences are truly magical, miraculous and transformative in many ways, they are often the beginning of a transformation that takes work that can last the rest of one’s life. We discuss the tremendous value of psychedelic experiences that not only offer individually transformative opportunities but also offer us different perspectives & changes in our worldview that may change the way that we approach our lives which is transforming our collective way of being for the better.

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Discussion with Tanya Lynn of Sistership Circle

In honour of International Women's Day, Tanya and Rebecca discuss the rise of the divine feminine as a healing and growing experience for both men and women as we all have both qualities and have favoured the masculine over the feminine to our own detriment. We discuss stepping into our power and approaching this time of social discord as an opportunity for us to learn and grow into a place where we can accept if not embrace everyone’s unique points of view as the medicines teach us to appreciate our uniqueness. We talk about how children embody such wonderful divine masculine and divine feminine qualities and represent an opportunity to cultivate a greater balance of these qualities within our society. 

Visit www.rebeccahayden.com for more Ayahuasca Integration content.