Deep-state Training and the Ayahuasca Healing Ceremony

Deep-State Training

The term "deep-state training" comes from neurofeedback, hypnosis, dream-work, and regression psychotherapy and refers to removing subconscious blocks that prevent changes in behavior. The objective is to recognize and resolve subconscious patterns without needing to fully bringing them into the light of consciousness, where such patterns often refuse to reveal themselves. Remediation takes place in those realms of awareness where the patterns are stored. These are areas of thought that are predominately nonintellectual, nonverbal, and not available to analysis in one's awakened state; hence the term "deep-state."

This work can treat acute conditions of drug and alcohol dependence, depression, obsessive-compulsive and post-traumatic stress disorders. It is being used for chronic conditions such as depression, sexual arousal disorders, and chronic fatigue syndrome to name a few. This focus on dysfunction, so typical of Western medicine, only begins to engage those aspects of mind responsible for personal, social, and spiritual awareness.

Neurofeedback researchers are developing deep-state training techniques whose salutary effects on self-perception share goals common to buddhist and other spiritual traditions. Protocols are being developed to enhance creativity, musicality, compassion, endurance, coordination, and focus.

"I thought I had worked through a lot of my 'stuff' in my two years of grad school. During the various trainings, I realized there where many more layers to attack deep down inside. I found myself going to places I never thought I would go, nor was I aware of the depth of the negative influences of my past and how strongly they had influenced me as a person. I now understand what has kept me from fulfilling my dreams."

— Anne Jensen, speaking of her experience with Jim Hardt's neurofeedback training.

In this workshop I will be providing aware-state neurofeedback training to prepare you for deep-state work. My goal is streamline your emotions and intellect, enhacing your sense of balance and clarity, so that you are better able to collect meaningful visions from your deep-state journeys.

"... with neurotherapy we are compressing time, and, in less than 2 months, achieving results that adepts such as yogis experience only after many years of meditating."

— Dr. Nancy White, writing in her 1998 article "Alpha-theta neurotherapy as a multi-level matrix of intervention."

The deep-state training we'll do won't be in the Western mode, but through a series of more ancient, and what we feel to be the more powerful ayahuasca ceremonies.

	Ayahuasca is a bitter drink extracted from plants found in the rainforest around the Amazon delta in South America. It has been used by native South American cultures for at least a thousand years to develop and heal communities and individuals. The goal of the Ayahuasca ceremonies is to enlighten, with the recognition that this is not strictly a process of the accretion of new ideas and patterns. Enlightenment, whatever that means, also requires regression, reconsideration, deconstruction, rebuilding, and sometimes outright destruction of fundamental beliefs. While not unique in facilitating this goal the Ayahuasca ceremony is unusually powerful as a catalyst for both personal deconstruction and reintegration.
Banisteriopsis capii		Psychotria viridis

"Through the activation of the unconscious, Ayahuasca expands a person’s consciousness to encompass other realities. This reality is similar to the reality we experience every night during dreaming. Ayahuasca increases the ‘twilight state’ between sleep and awake, the so called hypnagogic state. In this state the person is awake and aware in a relaxed, dreamlike manner, where so to speak a “magnifying glass” is put on their unconscious processes…

"Under the influence of Ayahuasca, you are able to access your own unconscious without interference from the analytical mind and its critical voice which is pacified for the moment. This is exactly what happens during hypnosis, but during the Ayahuasca intake a person is his or her own hypnotist and therapist. A person can receive new profound insights in old thinking and behavior patterns and learn to integrate former unconscious material on a higher level of consciousness."

—Yatra da Silveira Barbosa

The Ayahuasca ceremony is neither Eastern nor Western in its approach to consciousness and healing. Whereas Western therapy aims to remedy and normalize, and Eastern spiritual traditions aim to expand and enlighten, the Ayahuasca ceremony acts to unlock, conflate and integrate memories, attitudes and sensations of all kinds by inducing the simultaneous experience of body, intellect, emotion, culture, and spirit. In this the ceremony's effects are similar to deep-state psychotherapy, though the ceremony is more intense and dynamic.

A property fairly unique to ayahuasca in the spectrum of potent psychoactive substances is its gentleness. It does not cloud your lucidity or entangle your emotions. You remain aware of and in control throughout the experience and can escape from the sometimes bizarre world of your subconscious by simply asserting intellectual control. This, in conjunction with the broadly supportive setting, accounts for the tremendous success of the ceremony.

By recognizing the common elements between neurofeedback and the Ayahuasca ceremony we aim to develop a synergy between the modalities that will result in greater progress in your objectives of healing and personal growth.

The Ceremony				< back to to >
		The Ayahuasca ceremony involves the sacred preparation of the drink by an ayahuascero (healer, shaman, curandero, etc.) and the establishment of a safe environment free from physical, spiritual, and psychic threats. Establishing this realm of safety enables those taking the sacrament to leave their normal selves, travel to unfamiliar realms, and allow unfamiliar forces to emerge. The ayahuascero draws in positive forces, traditionally considered divine beings, to charge the environment and support those involved. In addition, these forces empower the ayahuascero to mediate in healing and transmitting knowledge to the participants. The ceremony, which lasts 4 to 8 hours, is done in the dark and involves the ayahuascero playing music, chanting, performing rituals, and helping each participant according to their need, as that is perceived by the ayahuascero.
Percy Garcia in his role as ayahuascero.
Those who are journeying appear immobile and quiet, although their own perceptions move in waves between intense stillness and intense mental activity. Your perceptions of the external world and your physical body are somewhat anesthetized: inputs are amplified, sensations are distorted and balance is quite poor. In addition, the ayahuasca causes short periods of intense nausea, usually followed by purging. Like other physical inputs that you experience in this state the purging has little effect on your state of mind. In the view of many traditional healers this purging is the cleansing of the soma and the spirit and is an essential part of the ceremony. Perhaps incidentally it also alkalizes the blood. For reasons having to do with physical digestion, as well as reasons pertaining to mental clarity and energy, it is important to precede the ceremonies with a special diet. This chemically prepares you for the psychoactive drink, alters your metabolism, and clears your digestive system to better prepare you for the stresses of contraction, ejection, and expansion. The diet, implemented by the participant, the physical and mental setting, developed by the ayahuascero, and the sacramental drink itself are all essential parts without which the ceremony would not be complete. In addition, we have found that extensive ceremonial preparation improves the experience, and post-ceremonial individual and group integration helps put the pieces together after the ceremony has concluded.

"All at once, I willed myself to rise. I sailed up through the tunnel of fire, higher and higher until I broke through to a white light. All darkness immediately vanished. My body felt light, at peace. I floated among a beautiful spread of colors and patterns. Slowly my ayahuasca vision faded. I returned to my body, to where I lay in the hut, insects calling from the jungle."

— Kira Salak, in National Geographic Magazine, March 2006

"... the experience of such a spiritual connection ... is a major healing force behind the extraordinary healing so often seen with (deep-state training). In other words, one connects with the God within, in whatever terms one wishes to express that, and opens one's heart to love — love of oneself and love of the other."

— Dr. Nancy White, referring to deep-state alpha-theta neurotherapy.

Ayahuasca:

An overview :
http://www.newbrainnewworld.com/?Altered_States%26nbsp%3B:Ayahuasca

Writer Kira Salak chronicles a ceremoney in the March 2006 issue of National Geographic :
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0603/features/peru.html

An interview with Yatra da Silveira Barbosa, a Brazilian ayahuascera:
http://www.newbrainnewworld.com/?Altered_States%26nbsp%3B:Ayahuasca:Interview%2FKundalini

Our ayahuascero Percy Garcia's web site at:
http://diosayahuascasana.multiply.com

Neurofeedback enhancement:

Nancy White's Enhancement Institute: http://www.enhancementinstitute.com
and her article, quoted above, on alpha-theta therapy: http://www.enhancementinstitute.com/neuropublished.html

Jim Hardt's alpha training: http://www.biocybernaut.com/

Les Fehmi's Open Focus: http://www.openfocus.com/

Val Brown's NeuroCare: http://www.zengar.com/

Pamela Enders Winner's Circle Coaching: http://www.pamelaenders.com/