How to Prepare for an Ayahuasca Retreat
Two questions usually come before this one. Whether ayahuasca is something for you at all, and if so, who you want to sit with. The first is yours to feel your way into, in your own time. The second matters as much as anything in this work, and we have given it its own space in How to choose a safe Ayahuasca Retreat.
Here we start at the point where those questions are behind you. You have been through our intake process. You are fit, you are cleared, you are coming. Now what?
You cannot fully prepare for an event from which you have to expect the unexpected. That is the first thing we tell people when they come to us. What you can do is arrive in the best possible condition to meet whatever is waiting for you.
The ayahuasca diet
There is a lot of information circulating about the so-called ayahuasca diet: no salt, no sugar, no chili, no pork, no fat, no sex. This regimen has a real origin, but it is not what most people think.
It comes from traditional Amazonian practice, specifically from the period of working with master plants in the jungle. These are subtler medicines than ayahuasca, and they require a clean, undisturbed system to be heard. These strict dietary restrictions belong to that context. Applying them wholesale to a Western ayahuasca retreat is, in our view, a misunderstanding of what they were meant for originally.
Therefore our approach is a little simpler.
What we recommend
Reduce anything you can that has a strong influence on your system: coffee, sugar, alcohol, marijuana, other recreational drugs and prescription drugs, pork, heavily processed foods and drinks. Eat as fresh and organic as possible. Minimize red meat. If your body is stronger with it, eat some. If it is stronger without, go without.
We even advise against fasting for some people. It depends on the person. For some, fasting creates clarity and more inner space. For others with a more fragile or slight constitution, it is simply too depleting.
The principle is simple: come as clean, as relaxed and as strong as possible.
Where to put your energy
What depletes almost everyone is arriving straight from a stressful life without having given themselves any transition time. Some people spend their first ceremony sleeping, because the nervous system takes the opportunity to recover before it allows anything deeper in. That is not wasted time, but it may be avoidable.
The eight days before your retreat, and the eight days after, both matter. Before, the work is to conserve energy and reduce noise.
In practice this means: less time with people who drain you, less small talk, less stress where you can avoid it. More time in nature, more movement, more water, more sleep. More meditation if that is part of your life. More attention on your intention: who are you, and what do you want? Come back to that question regularly in the days before you arrive.
After, it is more about letting the retreat run out slowly into ordinary life rather than ending it at the door. Keep the slower pace, the space, the attention on yourself for as long as you can, and let your retreat life and your everyday life blend into each other.
A note on sex
We recommend abstaining from sex in the eight days before your retreat and the eight days after. This includes masturbation. Tenderness and physical closeness are fine.
The reasons are practical rather than moral. Most people lose energy through sex rather than build it, and you will want to use it elsewhere. For women in particular, sex involves a strong absorption of the partner's energy, and ayahuasca will work to clear that before it can go anywhere deeper. That is not the best use of a ceremony.
More broadly, this period is one where both partners benefit from staying with their own energy rather than sharing it. The work asks for a certain kind of inner concentration that is harder to maintain when you are energetically entangled with someone else.
If this feels complicated or you have questions, we are happy to talk it through during your preparation call.
The hours before
The days before, you have been eating lightly and keeping your system clean. In the final hours before ceremony, the same principle sharpens to a point: bring in as little from outside as possible. This is not the time for input. It is the time to come as close to yourself as you can.
What that looks like is simple. Meditate. Walk. Sit in stillness. Journal. Drink tea. Dream. Lie in a hammock. Swim. Do some yoga. Whatever brings you closer to yourself, do that, and let everything that pulls you outward wait. Screens, noise, conversations you do not need. The fewer distractions, the better.
Then food. The best state for ceremony is an empty stomach. Better still is an empty gut. You want the medicine to move through smoothly. So arrive empty. Empty in the body, and as far as you can manage, empty in yourself.
At last a word about overdoing it: The preparation is a container, not a guarantee, and the medicine will work with whoever arrives, exactly as they are.