In the Amazon, the relationship between person, plant, and shaman is not an isolated ritual but a practice that, over time, transforms habits, perceptions, and ways of being in the world. The voices gathered in the testimony reproduced here speak to this idea: ayahuasca does not appear as a miraculous “product” but as a mediator that reveals and sustains inner processes. From intimate experience to ceremonial technique, what emerges is a cultural cartography of healing that combines nature, sound, and spiritual discipline.
The Persistence of the Experience
One recurring idea in the conversation is that discoveries made in ceremony “stay inside.” These are not merely fleeting visions; sustained practice produces lasting changes in perception and emotional life. This explains why regular participants—whether in extended retreats or recurrent practices—observe a shift: what was once a conscious effort to “empty oneself” becomes a way of life in which stillness and attention persist beyond the ritual space.
That prolonged effect has multiple components. First, the intensity of the ceremonial experience generates insights—revelations about the emotional body, personal history, or repetitive patterns—that can reorganize the narrative of the self. Second, the environment—the jungle, the surrounding nature—acts as an amplifier: the vibration of the place, birdsong, and the silence itself foster a sensory opening that facilitates integration of what was seen or felt during the ritual.
From Ceremony to Everyday Life
Speakers describe how that stillness becomes a state that can be carried into daily life. Changes in diet, in the relationship to solitude, or in how one relates to nature are some examples. The practice ceases to be a discipline confined to the ceremonial sphere and comes to inform decisions and habits: food stops being an imposed “diet” and becomes a natural coherence with the inner search; nature becomes a refuge and a constant reminder of a broader vibration.
Here the notion of sustained practice matters. Those who space ceremonies far apart perceive setbacks: the need to “review” learnings and purges that become more arduous. In contrast, continuity allows for deepening, refining sensitivity, and sustaining states of calm and presence that do not fade easily. This is not a promise of perfection but the observation that ritual repetition reinforces neural and affective habits.
The Shaman’s Role: Much More Than a Guide
One of the richest elements of the testimony is reflection on the figure of the shaman. For newcomers, the image may be that of a healing authority or even a “guru.” However, the experience described here dismantles that caricature: the shaman does not appear as spectacle but as a presence that sustains and summons the presence of the Great Spirit (Arutam).
This intervention manifests in several ways. Voice, songs, and instruments are not ornamentation: they are tools that, according to tradition, interact with the plant and with participants’ sensitivity. There is a technique in singing and intonation that seems to synchronize the interior experience with a sonic network that guides processes of purging, release, and calm. Likewise, the shaman uses practices such as blows (soplidos), specific objects, or the handling of tsentsaks which, transmitted from master to student, shape a particular way of working with the plant.
According to this account, the shaman aims to return the person “to the deepest truth,” pointing to stillness and offering the possibility of remaining in it. It is not about imposing visions but confirming what the person reaches: the shaman is witness and mediator.
Music, Sound, and the Body
The interplay between ayahuasca and the music performed by the shaman is another central theme. Songs, violins, strumming, and blows do not merely accompany; they directly affect the bodily experience. The testimony describes how, in moments of intense tension, the entrance of a precise sound can provoke sudden relaxation, an immediate need to purge, and a sense of relief. This correspondence between sound, visceral reaction, and emotional discharge highlights the bodily dimension of the ceremony: it is not only a visual or intellectual experience but a process that travels through the nervous system.
From an ethnomusicological perspective, what occurs can be understood as an “affective coordination”: rhythms and intonations that create frames of meaning and safety, which in turn mobilize physiological responses. In traditional contexts, these songs (known as icaros in Peru) are taught across generations and considered an integral part of healing knowledge. Their efficacy, practitioners say, is not only symbolic but operative: they make the ayahuasca “react” in specific ways.
To Heal, To Understand, To Transcend
Participants insist that ayahuasca helps relativize problems. What once seemed a world in personal crisis is reconfigured as part of a vaster “reality”: the experience allows one to see that daily dramas, painful though they are, are both bearable and transformable. The videogame metaphor appears here to suggest that life’s trials are challenges that can be faced with another perspective, less attached to anguish.
At the same time, the plant facilitates confronting mental health issues or complex emotional burdens. Nevertheless, the account emphasizes that this is not a shortcut: it implies work, purges, and, in many cases, continued accompaniment. Ayahuasca opens doors; sustained practice and the presence of the shaman make it possible to pass through those doors with less risk of becoming trapped in confusion.
Cultural Dimension and Transmission
The testimony also traces a genealogy: Ruymán’s main teacher was his grandfather Jimpikit, someone whose tsentsaks, transmitted through sacred initiations, configured a particular way of relating to the plant, teaching, and healing. This perspective confirms that the practice does not arise in a vacuum: it is a complex cultural transmission that articulates techniques, cosmologies, and ethical codes. The master-student relationship is not only technical learning but the adoption of a sensibility: how to look, how to sing, how to hold silence.
This web of knowledge implies respect for context: the jungle is not a stage but a co-author of the experience. The jungle’s vibration—the birdsong, humidity, darkness—integrates into the ritual and makes it more powerful. The practice is therefore best understood as a whole: plants, music, shaman, community, and nature.
Final Reflections
Viewed with distance, the recounted experience offers several useful lessons for those who study or are interested in shamanic practices from academic or cultural perspectives. First, it highlights the importance of continuity: repeated practice produces a transformation that is not limited to a single ceremony. Second, it evidences the centrality of the shaman as a technical and relational mediator: his voice and actions modulate the plant’s response and sustain the safety of the process. Third, it reminds us that ayahuasca operates on multiple planes: bodily, emotional, symbolic, and social.
Finally, the testimony invites contemplation of the possibility that certain ways of life—more attentive to nature, subject to rhythms of silence and practice—can offer alternatives of meaning in the face of contemporary acceleration. This is not romanticizing the experience nor denying its complexities; rather, it is recognizing that for those who practice with respect and continuity, ayahuasca and the shaman offer a path of self-knowledge and reconnection with a deep stillness that, once reached, transforms the way of inhabiting the world.
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