2010 SAC Conference - Available Audio for Download (mp3 format)

Below you will find the description of the panels, and a link to the mp3 of that panel. These talks were from the SAC Meeting on March 20, 2010. You may also download the 2010 Conference Brochure by clicking here.

Perspectives on Ayahuasca Healing

The papers in this panel will explore a range of perspectives on healing related to the entheogenic plant mixture ayahuasca, traditionally used in the Amazon basin. Bringing together perspectives from diverse disciplines, it will shed light on the ways healing takes place in an ayahuasca ritual, the ways it is perceived by participants and even explore the ways that ayahuasca can be integrated in more western modes of healing. These papers will address the question of the healing potential of ayahuasca in a global environment and provide much needed insight into the modes of healing of entheogens in general.

Chair: Evgenia Fotiou
Participants: Brian Anderson, Susana Bustos, Erik Davis, Richard Doyle, Frank Echenhofer, Evgenia Fotiou, Francis Jervis, Stephen Trichter
Discussant: Stephan Beyer

ABSTRACTS

Part 1: Perspectives on Ayahuasca Healing

Ayahuasca and the Construction of a Healing Tradition
Erik Davis

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Historically, the Euro-American embrace of hallucinogenic or entheogenic substances such as peyote and psilocybe mushrooms has been to strip them of their traditional contexts and incorporate them into modern "countercultural" patterns of consumption, framing, and meaning production. This has not happened in regards to ayahuasca. Though contexts and narratives around the meaning and purpose of ayahuasca are certainly changing with the increase in North American and European interest, the essential framework of a led spiritual healing circle has largely remained intact, at least in popular consciousness. Why? What does this say about the particular history of this encounter between Western psychoactive culture and indigenous and mestizo use? What does this say about the changing paradigms of healing, medicine, and the meaning of hallucinogenic substances?

Ethnomedical Tourism in the Amazon: more than drugs and desperation?
Francis Jervis

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The practice of curing rituals in which Western tourists take part as "patients" is a rapidly growing phenomenon in the Peruvian Amazon and elsewhere. Activities of this kind involving the ingestion of ayahuasca or other psychoactive plants have been unreasonably characterized as "drug tourism" in both the media and anthropological discourse, an account which perpetuates established Western constructions of drug use and contributes to the marginalization of the indigenous people involved. It is argued that these practices need to be understood as a "shamanism of acculturation" analogous to Graburn’s "art of acculturation," in which the motives of all participants are distinct from those encountered in drug tourism, and that the novel term "ethnomedical tourism" most adequately describes these practices. A critically informed practice of ethnomedical tourism has the potential to contribute to cultural revitalization and the protection of biodiversity in some of the world’s most critically threatened regions.

Working with "La Medicina": elements of healing in contemporary ayahuasca rituals
Evgenia Fotiou, M.A.

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This paper will look at the ways healing takes place in an ayahuasca ceremony both from the perspective of the shaman as well as the "patient". I will look at the elements of a successful healing in the rituals I observed during my fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon, as well as the ways healing is conceptualized by western participants. I will focus particularly on the element of crisis that is usually found in healing narratives, a crisis that becomes the jumping board for positive transformation, whether it’s physical or psychological or even spiritual healing.

Intimacy in the Healing Function of Ayahuasca Icaros
Susana Bustos, Ph. D.

Not Available at this time

The phenomenology of healing experiences attributed to icaros during ayahuasca ceremonies was addressed in an earlier study by the author (Bustos, 2008). The meanings’ structure of the phenomenon suggests that the healing icaro (as sung song) is primarily invested with the quality of an otherness, with which the person experiences degrees of intimacy that range from a dialogical to a unitive type of consciousness. This presentation describes the dynamic of interaction between the person and the icaro, and discusses how this interaction impacts the unfolding of the healing process, as well as the person’s apprehension of undergoing intense healing. Drawing concepts from different disciplines, such as psychology and music therapy, this presentation aims to contribute to the larger understanding of the shamanic use of singing in facilitating therapeutic states of consciousness under psychotropic effects.

Part 2: Therapeutic Potential of Ayahuasca in a Global Environment

Healing With Plant Intelligence: A Report from Ayahuasca
Pr Richard Doyle

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Numerous and diverse reports indicate the efficacy of shamanic plant adjuncts (e.g. iboga, ayahuasca, psilocybin) for the care and treatment of addiction, PTSD, cancer, cluster headaches and depression. This paper reports on a healing of life long asthma and atopic dermatitis in the shamanic context of the contemporary Peruvian Amazon. The paper will suggest that emerging language, concepts and data drawn from the sciences of plant signaling and behavior regarding "plant intelligence" provides a useful heuristic framework for comprehending and actualizing the healing potentials of visionary plants.

Out of the Jungle and Onto the Couch: Integrating Ayahuasca into Psychoanalytic Treatment
Stephen Trichter, Psy.D.

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Vegetalismo, the indigenous shamanic tradition of the Amazon Basin, uses the visionary brew, ayahuasca, as a tool towards healing the patient's interwoven mind, body, and spirit. Specifically, it uses a combination of plants and chanting to invoke the spirits to assist with purging out the energetic, psychic, physical, and emotional blockages in the patient. Ayahuasca has found increasing popularity among Western spiritual seekers due to these reported healing properties and its reputation of creating mystical states of consciousness. However, this popularity and subsequent usage by Westerners brings its own challenges. The integration of a centuries-old shamanic healing practice into the context of the postmodern world requires a careful balance between traditional shamanic and Western ways of thought. The balance lies between the ability to recognize and absorb the perennial healing wisdom unleashed by the brew, and its responsible and safe incorporation into the Western psyche. "Out of the Jungle" will present the challenges that come with the use of this healing practice cross-culturally, and propose a preliminary integrated transcultural healing model based in psychoanalytic theory to maximize healing and minimize potential harm to patients.

The translation of ayahuasca into a depression and anxiety therapy
Brian Anderson

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Recent clinical and ethnographic research suggests that ayahuasca and other substances that induce modified states of consciousness (MSCs) can have beneficial effects on depression and anxiety. Conventional psychiatry, however, currently tends to view most MSCs as being pathological rather than therapeutic. In this paper, I examine the socio-cultural processes involved in the translation of ayahuasca from a folk medicine into a potential conventional treatment for depression and anxiety. The data, gathered from a survey the scientific literature as well as from interviews with biomedical researchers who study ayahuasca’s therapeutic uses, are drawn together to illustrate both how the efficacy of ayahuasca as a treatment for depression and anxiety is currently being culturally-shaped, and what this implies for the role of MSCs in conventional psychiatry.

The Dynamics of Healing and Creativity during Ayahuasca Shamanic Journeys:
Toward A Neuroscience - Human Sciences Model
Pr. Frank Echenhofer

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The Amazonian psychoactive brew ayahuasca induces shamanic journey experiences and is reported to facilitate psychological and physical healing, creativity, and spiritual development. A new model regarding the experiences, functions, and neural processes of ayahuasca, that integrates evidence from neuroscience and the human sciences, suggests ayahuasca facilitates three main sequential psychophysical change process stages of form dismantling and healing processes, form creation processes, and form expression processes. Dominant experiential ayahuasca themes will be summarized and related to similar process themes in psychotherapy, mythology and religion. Our EEG research shows ayahuasca significantly alters global EEG frequency coherence patterns across widely distributed neural networks. The reported neural changes and benefits of ayahuasca may arise through the enhancement of a normal although rare state of consciousness involving widespread neural networks combining both deliberative thought and spontaneous thought processes within a unified field of consciousness where highly complex and creative cognition emerges spontaneously.