Ayahuasca called. Again.

I was speaking to a friend the other day, and heard them say some words that bounce around in my own head from time to time: I think I want to do ayahuasca again.

Someone told me once that you'll know the time is right to sit with ayahuasca (or return to it) when the medicine taps you on the shoulder. I've never forgotten that.

I spent many years researching ayahuasca on and off before I ever sat in a ceremony. Years of reading, listening, questioning…I was genuinely curious, but not quite ready to make the plunge. I think part of me was waiting for permission that never came from outside. What finally moved me was losing my dad. Grief has a way of cutting through the noise of ordinary life, and in the months after he died, I felt an unmistakable tap. Clear and quiet, it was time.

I won't describe my personal experiences with ayahuasca here — that's perhaps a story for another day, and honestly, those experiences seem to resist concrete language anyway. What I can tell you is that I walked out of each ceremony feeling like someone had switched on lights in rooms I didn't know I had. And almost immediately after, I knew I wanted to go back. Not because it was comfortable (it definitely wasn't always) but because I could feel doors in me left ajar. There was more of me to excavate, and I knew it.

My last ceremony was less than six months ago, and I've yet to feel that clear tap on the shoulder again — although as I write this, I get the feeling it's on the horizon.

The First Time

I spent years circling ayahuasca before I actually went, and now I don't think of those years as wasted time. They were all part of the preparation. The curiosity that kept pulling me back to read one more account, listen to one more podcast, ask one more question...I believe all of that is part of the call. What I've noticed, both in my own experience and from others, is that the moment of readiness rarely announces itself with certainty. It's more like a settling in. 

Sometimes it arrives through loss, the way it did for me. Sometimes it comes after years of therapy or inner work that has been genuinely valuable but feels like it's reached its limit — like you've gone as far as a particular road can take you. Sometimes it's simply a life that looks fine from the outside but feels, privately, like it's asking for more depth than you've been willing to give it.

If any of that resonates, it's worth paying attention to. The fear that often accompanies these feelings isn't a sign you're not ready. In my experience, it usually means you're right on the edge of something.

The Next Time

What I hear from people who are considering returning is often some version of this: life has changed, genuinely, but something has resurfaced. An old pattern has made itself known again. A sense that the first experience cracked something open that is ready to be explored again, this time more deeply.

One woman I know attended her first retreat with her partner, and a clear intention: to work on the self-limiting beliefs that had been quietly running her life. And she did make progress. She opened up, let people in, and surprised herself with how vulnerable she was able to be with a group of strangers. But she also realised, only afterward, that she'd spent a good part of the ceremony worrying over her partner's journey instead of giving in to her own. She'd gone in hoping to loosen her grip on things, and discovered she hadn't quite let her guard down enough to include herself. Several months later, that feeling returned. Same as the first time, but with one important difference: this time she knew she needed to go alone.

Another person I know came to ayahuasca with a different yet very common misconception. He thought the medicine would "fix" him. What he found instead was that he'd always been the person he was looking for. The work of ayahuasca, as he came to understand it, wasn't about becoming someone new — it was about shedding all the junk that had accumulated on top of who he already was. The old patterns, the fear, the small ways of thinking that had never really been his to begin with. He described it as a process of remembering. Of coming back to himself after a long time of not quite knowing where he'd gone.

That framing has stayed with me because it reframes the question of whether or not to return entirely. It's not: am I rock-bottom enough to need this again? It's am I ready to remember?

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Feeling the tap?

At New Life Rising, we hold space for both the first-time traveler and those returning to go deeper with the medicine. If something in these words resonated, reach out to learn more about our upcoming retreats in Texas and Costa Rica and take that next step.