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Science

• Entheogens & Existential Intelligence: The Use of “Plant Teachers” as Cognitive Tools

  Posted by admin • Category: Overviews, Psychology, Psychiatry, Spirit & Healing

  

  The use of entheogens such as ayahuasca is exemplary of the long and ongoing tradition in many cultures to employ psychoactives as tools that stimulate foundational types of understanding. That such substances are capable of stimulating profoundly transcendent experiences is evident from both the academic literature and anecdotal reports. This article attempts to present these concepts in such a way that the possibility of using entheogens as tools is taken seriously by those with an interest in new and transformative ideas in education.

  Tags: education, existential intelligence
  

• Ayahuasca and Transformation

  Posted by Steve Beyer • Category: Creativity, Experiences, Neurosciences, Visual Art

  

  Steve Beyer talks about ayahuasca and transformative experiences, in a clip from the film project From Neurons to Nirvana: Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century, produced and directed by Vancouver-based filmmaker, writer, and media artist Oliver Hockenhull.

• Beta-Carbolines

  Posted by Steve Beyer • Category: Botany, Experiences, Overviews, Pharmacology, Biochemistry

  Steve Beyer, author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon, questions the Western conventional wisdom that the sole function of the beta-carbolines in the ayahuasca drink is simply to allow DMT to become orally active, and explores the scientific and ethnographic literature for evidence of beta-carboline psychoactivity.

  Tags: beta-carbolines
  

• Important new research project about ayahuasca in the USA

  Posted by Bia Labate • Category: Science

  The goal is to evaluate the safety of this potential drug of abuse and potential therapeutic applications of ayahuasca by studying its physiological and psychological effects, as well as its peripheral and central neurochemical effects at dosages that are typical for the religious use of this substance.

• Therapeutic caapi tea: a prototype – Material and Method

  Posted by admin • Category: Physiology, Medicine

  More and more people are using or consider using ayahuasca tea as an alternative medicine for different therapeutic purposes: depression, Parkinson’s disease, ageing-related cognitive decline, etc.

  Yet most of these actual or planned uses are relying on the rich pharmacodynamics of the caapi vine and don’t necessitate the preparation and use of a standard mix. Rather what is needed is a caapi tea specifically designed for these purposes.

• Psychointegration

  Posted by Steve Beyer • Category: Science

  Steve Beyer
  Anthropologist Michael Winkelman, at Arizona State University, says that shamanic practices — drumming, chanting, and the ingestion of sacred plants — create a special state of consciousness he calls transpersonal consciousness, and that these practices create this state of consciousness through the process of psychointegration — that is, by integrating a number of otherwise discrete modular brain functions. Anthropologist Homayun Sidky, at Miami University in Ohio, says that this theory, despite a surface plausibility, is without empirical justification.

  Tags: psychointegration
  

• Blending Traditions – Using Indigenous Medicinal Knowledge to Treat Drug Addiction

  Posted by admin • Category: Physiology, Medicine, Psychology, Psychiatry

  Jacques Mabit, M.D.
  Ancestral medical practices are based on a highly sophisticated practical knowledge and view the controlled induction of non-ordinary states of consciousness as potentially beneficial, even in the treatment of the modern phenomena of drug addiction. These ancestral practices stand in contrast to the clumsiness with which Western peoples induce altered states of consciousness. Drawing from his clinical experience in the High Peruvian Amazonian forest, the author describes the therapeutic benefits of the wise use of medicinal plants, including non-addictive psychoactive preparations, such as the well-known Ayahuasca tea. Within an institutional structure, a therapeutic system combining indigenous practices with contemporary psychotherapy yields highly encouraging results (positive in 2/3 of the patients). This invites us to reconsider conventional approaches to drug addiction and the role of the individual’s spiritual journey in recovery.

• Ayahuasca and Mental Health Among the Shuar

  Posted by Steve Beyer • Category: Science, Spirit & Healing

  Steve Beyer
  We have talked before about the Grob, McKenna, Callaway, et al., psychiatric study on the long-term effects of drinking ayahuasca in the ceremonies of the União do Vegetal church. I noted that the study had not clearly disentangled any bias that might have resulted from the fact that the ayahuasca drinkers — but not controls — had been preselected for their orderly churchgoing habits. Here is a study that may shed some light on that question.

  Tags: health, mental health, sanity
  

• A Neurobiological Theory of ‘The Fall’

  Posted by Dennis McKenna • Category: Neurosciences, Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Physiology, Medicine, Psychology, Psychiatry

  Dennis McKenna
  In the book ‘Left In the Dark’, a culmination of over fifteen years of independent research into human evolution, the authors postulate that the universal myth of a pre-historic Golden Age is a racial memory that reflects our primate evolution in an arboreal, rainforest environment in which humans possessed mental and psychic abilities that have since become lost or atrophied in the profane ages that followed.

  Tags: diet, evolution
  

• Ayahuasca, Neurogenesis and Depression

  Posted by Daniel Mirante • Category: Neurosciences, Spirit & Healing

  Daniel Mirante
  A hypothesis suggesting Ayahuasca may be growing healthier brains…

  Tags: brain, depression, Healing, neurogenesis
  

• The Scientific Investigation of Ayahuasca – A Review of Past and Current Research

  Posted by Dennis McKenna • Category: Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Science

  By Dennis McKenna, Charles Grob & Jace Callaway
  A biomedical investigation of long-term hoasca drinkers by the Medical Studies section of the UDV (Centro de Estudos Medicos).

  Tags: callaway, grob, hoasca project, McKenna, udv
  

• The Ayahuasca Effect

  Posted by Ayahuasca dot com • Category: Overviews, Science

  By Kirby Surprise
  It is often reported that the tea breaks even profound depressive episodes in a single use. This positive psychological benefit is what I call the “Ayahuasca Effect.” That is, to produce an intense and positive integrative experience with lasting beneficial effects from use of the tea, with no side effects common to pharmaceutical antidepressants.

  Tags: depression, DMT, neurotransmitters, serotonin
  

• Effects of ayahuasca on psychometric measures of anxiety, panic-like and hopelessness in Santo Daime members.

  Posted by Bia Labate • Category: Psychology, Psychiatry, Science

  Ayahuasca ingestion did not modify state- or trait-anxiety. The results are discussed in terms of the possible use of ayahuasca in alleviating signs of hopelessness and panic-like related symptoms.

  Tags: anxiety, Healing, psychotherapy, santo daime
  

• What foods and drugs need to be avoided?

  Posted by admin • Category: Overviews, Science, Spirit & Healing

  Foods and medications to be avoided with Ayahuasca

  Tags: beta-carbolines, diet, food, interactions, MAO, MAOI, medications, tyramine
  

• Neip´s Site Publishes Phd Thesis on Ayahuasca therapy

  Posted by admin • Category: Psychology, Psychiatry, Science

  Fifty-two North American and European participants in syncretic Brazilian church religious ceremonies were assessed for indications of personality and clinical disorders, and tendencies towards chemical dependency and addiction.