From Toad Venom to Reiki – My Firsthand Experience with Holistic Healing

My One-Week Retreat at Arkana Spiritual Center (Part II)

Libertad Jungle, Amazon Rainforest, Peru

When we left off, I had just entered my second ayahuasca ceremony after an incredibly powerful and healing first experience. I’ll kick off with the reflection of my second ceremony the following morning.

Day 4 (Wednesday, December 1, 2021)

Ayahuasca Ceremony 2 Reflection (11/30/21)

Intention: To heal my past traumas and self-limiting beliefs

I don’t use these words lightly and I put a lot of thought into it since the previous night’s ceremony – my second ayahuasca ceremony was one of the most difficult experiences of my entire life. I felt drained, depleted, and in need of a recharge. After having gone through it, I feel like I now somewhat understand what it means to experience a ‘dark night of the soul.’

I took ¾ of a cup at the outset and it took about one hour for me to start feeling the effects. I mostly focused on my breathing as a way to center myself and bring me into the experience.

I started worrying about my physical and mental health, going down alleyways of worst case scenarios that could happen to me on ayahuasca, and second-guessing myself. 

Was taking ayahuasca even a good idea?

What am I doing here?

Do I want to participate in any of the remaining two ceremonies after this?

My mind was creating misconceived perceptions about my own mental well-being, generating self-fear unnecessarily, and experiencing intense anxiety.

I also started yawning intensely. Big, deep, long, and very frequent yawns. The Shamans consider yawns as a form of purging (along with vomiting, burping, diarrhea, crying, tearing, sweating, shivering, twitching, and convulsing). These are all ways the body rids itself of energy no longer serving it during ceremonies.

If I could sum it up, I truly felt like I was dying. Not so much physically, but mentally. It was an intense feeling, seeing, and dancing with my shadow self that I didn’t know existed as it did.A bit over halfway through the ceremony, Manuel (one of the facilitators) started rhythmically beating a drum, which grounded me. During this, I heard ~4-5 intense jaguar roars outside on the property.

Almost in an instant, I felt this symbolism telling me that I was like the energy from that strong, courageous animal. I experienced the intensity of the shadow, self-limiting mind and came out of it with fortitude and a new perspective. 

The mental feeling from this ceremony was more draining than a 16 hour day dealing with financial models, pitch decks, and client calls. It quite literally hurt my brain – death by own self-sabotage/overthinking.

The medicine truly doesn’t give you what you want – but it certainly gives you what you need. 

From that experience, I learned that it is crucial to understand, integrate, and fully love the dark side of us to become the best person we can be – and break through those self-limiting beliefs.

 After the intensity subsided, I had two interesting experiences.

1. An uncanny recollection of a past life event.
2. An extraterrestrial (ET) experience involving a UFO. They were advanced, kind, and explained that when humans reach a benevolent vibration, we unlock new capacities of the mind through concentrated will and practice.

Close to the end of the ceremony, I came to the realization to “stop wanting and JUST BE”. When you just be and let all of life unfold without resistance, it works out exactly how it needs to. The medicine and experience showed me the need to release control.

The ceremony ended at 3:30am. I went to bed in a rough emotional and exhausted mental state and slept for four hours.

Day 4:

We woke up and had the Rapé ceremony with the shamans at 8am. The Rapé medicine is used to clear out the sinuses, throat, and lungs. It is also known to help open the third eye. The version they make is fresh, in liquid form, and considered cleaner than the powered form. Like all of the other plant medicines, it is made on the Arkana property. The shamans also mentioned they helped hundreds of people during the COVID-19 pandemic using this medicine. 

We all went up, lied down, and took turns having the shamans put the medicine in our noses. This helped bring me out of my daze from the previous night and I found this plant medicine incredibly beneficial.

A couple days prior, Falcon, our guide said, “the jungle is our pharmacy.”  I love that’s how naturally the people of the region live. For the most part, they use the plants and natural remedies from the rainforest, as they have for centuries, to help cure their ailments.

After the group share, I skipped lunch for an acupressure/reiki massage. 

Reiki is primarily a hands-on (or hands-off) form of channeled energetic healing. The giver acts as a channel for universal life energy to enter the recipient. Reiki can never cause harm and ultimately directs itself to where the recipient needs it most.

Reiki can be powerful when coupled with traditional physical medicine to shorten healing time, eliminate pain, and reduce negative side-effects. The experience can be different for everyone, ranging from states of deep peace and relaxation, to physical sensations, visions, or deeply profound spiritual experience.

It can also easily be described as the Universe’s way of bringing you back to your natural state of being.

Gloria, the practitioner, was in high demand because of her gifts and healing abilities. She is from Venezuela and trained in a number of energy healing and massage modalities which she has combined into her own unique technique. She also facilitates the Sapo (aka Bufo (Bufo Alvarius), Sonoran Desert Toad venom – 5-MeO-DMT) ceremony which happens on day 5 – a very spiritual experience.

The massage was an hour and a half, and incredibly rejuvenating along with the reiki she performed. The acupressure points (in the hands, arms, and feet) are connected to the various chakras and parts of the physical and emotional body (heart, head, organs, emotions, etc). 

As she worked on my back, she individually went down the sides of the spine releasing the tension, energy, and emotions. The right side is associated with the father and the paternal ancestral lineage, while the left side of the body is associated with the mother’s side.

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Side Note: 

Interestingly, a month after the massage, I read a fascinating quote which showed me the science behind how she cleared the blockages in my back. 

Dr. Candace Pert, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, and the person who discovered the opioid receptor to which morphine and other opioids bind, stated the following:

“Though many of these modalities had a basis in Eastern philosophy and other non-Western traditions, which as a Western-trained scientist I would not ordinarily have known anything about, I had in fact had a limited exposure to Eastern ideas that dated back to the mid-eighties during my NIH lab days.

Because of the growing public awareness of my research on endorphins and other neuropeptides, people from all kinds of unexpected backgrounds had sought me out at the time. A bearded yogi dressed in white and wearing a turban showed up at my office one day to ask me if endorphins were concentrated along the spine in a way that corresponded to the Hindu chakras.

The chakras, he explained, were centers of “subtle energy” that governed basic physical and metaphysical functions from sexuality to higher consciousness.

I had no idea what he was talking about, but, trying to be helpful, I pulled out a diagram that depicted how there were two chains of nerve bundles located on either side of the spinal cord, each rich with many of the information-carrying peptides.

He placed his own chakra map over my drawing and together we saw how the two systems overlapped.”

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Day 5 (Thursday, December 2, 2021)

The food at Arkana Spiritual Center is A++ and the previous night was great. On the night jungle walk we saw a few giant spiders and tarantulas, boa constrictors in the trees, and I even got to hold a cayman (baby crocodiles native to the Amazon).

We were back in time to go to sleep/relax early and I went to bed at 8:30pm. After only sleeping for seven hours over the previous two days, I indulged in a 10 hour slumber. 

At 10am, a couple hours after breakfast, we went to do the Sapo ceremony.

Sapo (or Bufo) is the venom from the Bufo Alvarius toad in the Sonoran desert. It contains the active compound 5-MeO-DMT, which is also known as the “God” or “Spirit molecule.” The ceremony is short but incredibly profound. It offers an intense, concentrated, and deeply mystical experience comparable to Hindu experiences of Moksha and Samadhi or Buddhist experiences of Nirvana. It makes you feel one and connected with the singular consciousness which we all are.

The toad comes out from underground for only three months a year. During this time, the venom is carefully removed from the toad so as not to harm it (the animal is also left with enough to protect itself). The venom is then dried, vaporized, and inhaled. The experience lasted 30 minutes for me (although felt like 5) and was one of the most indescribable and life changing things I’ve come across. Immediately after, I journaled to recollect what happened. 

Sapo Ceremony Reflection:

• After inhaling the smoke, I lay down and closed my eyes. I slipped into what felt like a singularity of nothingness – blankness – empty space that was whole, but simultaneously an absence of anything. It was pure calm where words came through in a clear feeling. The closest thing I can analogize it to is when Neo was in the white “Construct” space in the Matrix

• I kept hearing, seeing and more than anything, feeling the words help and guide – that I’m here to help and to guide.

• To help people overcome their fears and emotions that they want to keep suppressed and hide away.

• This space I was in told me that my life is not just for me, but for all. Everyone’s emotions, fears, feelings are all mine as well.

• I started tearing up with tears streaming down my face during part of the ceremony. They weren’t sad tears, but rather beautiful tears of love, help, and faith. The tears of all tears.

• I felt as if I could see all of love and life in each tear. The genesis of the tear holding the genesis of life, creation, and what we are all here to understand (and in some ways, overcome).

• We are here to feel our emotions. All of them. And love ourselves and them regardless of which emotion it is. To be able to hold ourselves in a space of care and full compassion.

• The purpose of being here is love and creation, and my purpose here is to help guide myself and others to that inner state of self-love; to the oneness that we all already are. We have to be here for one another. All parts of each other. 

• Near the end of the ceremony, once I sat up, I felt an intense pulsing and undeniable energy up and down my spine with each inhale and exhale.

After the incredibly refreshing experience, it felt like everyone at the retreat was on cloud 9 – feeling pure love for one another and everything that is. Later that evening we had our third ayahuasca ceremony.

Ayahuasca Ceremony 3 Reflection (12/2/21) 

Intention: I want to go deeper with my spirituality

• Following my last experience, I decided to cut it back. I took ½ a cup to start and ¼ cup for my second dose. 

• It started slowly and calmly with a lot of yawning (as my body’s way to rid itself of energy that it wanted to let go of). I also had visions of the flower of life (sacred geometry).

• I thought about my mom and how she was always smiling – happy and thankful for everything in life. I thought to myself, “that is how you live a spiritual existence.”

• I then had yet third extraterrestrial experience, communicating with a different kind of ET, but I only saw its head. It showed me the surface of a planet covered in windowed structures on the surface with green/blue lights. Under it all was a subterranean world. I couldn’t see inside and just asked why they were appearing to me. The ETs said they were there just to show me that they exist. I asked where they are located and they said a different star system and galaxy entirely.

• As the ceremony progressed, I felt extremely present, and this is really the only way I can describe it.

• It showed me that being extremely present is how to get deeper spiritually – because then you are in the now and appreciate all that is happening in this exact moment as we are made to live and enjoy life without constantly worrying over our future or preoccupying ourselves with what’s already done and immutable in the past.

• I was absolutely loving and enjoying the Icaros and all the singing and guitar playing from the shamans. Following this, I had two more (seemingly polarizing) realizations as it related to my intention:

  • 1) Stillness is key to going deeper spiritually. Feeling the stillness and sitting in it takes you to where you need to be if you want to go deeper.

  • 2) Music is somehow key to spirituality. Maybe it’s chanting, binaural beats, or just your favorite music, I’m not sure. But there is also depth to spirit within the wonderful vibratory sounds of life.

• The ceremony ended around 3am and we went to bed shortly thereafter. 

Arkana literally translates to ‘protection’. It is opened during the first ceremony, and the shamans gave Arkana to us at the last ceremony to protect us from external stimuli after we return home. We received this during our last ceremony in the form of a personal icaro from one of the shamans. 

Day 6 (Friday, December 3, 2021)

Ayahuasca Ceremony 4 Reflection (12/3/21)

Intention: Help me open my heart

• I took ¾ of a cup for my last ceremony and the effect was pretty strong. I felt inclined to lay down, but didn’t want to and resisted doing so for about an hour and a half. It ultimately got to the point where the medicine was telling me to go to sleep and it kept drifting me in and out of consciousness. I would wake up occasionally during random icaros, the offering of the second dose, Manuel’s drumming, my personal Arkana icaro, and the end of the ceremony.

• When I woke up at one point, I kept wondering why Mother Ayahuasca wanted me to sleep – was she telling me to quite literally “sleep on it”? Aka sleep on why I closed my heart in the first place?

• Coming out of it all, I do feel like dozing off had the symbolism of sleeping on why I closed my heart. To really think about if that approach/mindset/feeling is 1) serving me, 2) how it makes me feel, and 3) how I want to feel.  

I went to bed at 4:30am and slept for two hours. The following morning, we had breakfast, packed, and had our last group share. 

Day 7 (Saturday, December 4, 2021)

Afterwards, we did a small gift ceremony with our retreat group. We all put something we brought with us into the center of the room for someone else. This was not something we consciously brought with us to give, as it was told we were doing this on the last day. Gifts ranged from crystals, poems, books, necklaces, jewelry, clothing, and other personally meaningful items.  

One person picked a gift at random, and gave it to another person in the group. It was a unique intention that brought forth a lot of meaning and energetic entanglement within the group after a week of healing and growing together. 

At midday, we took the hour and a half boat ride back to Nauta, and then a two hour bus ride to Iquitos to culminate our incredible ayahuasca retreat at Arkana Spiritual Center. 

So much growth, healing, and evolution took place during the week, that it is hard to put it all into words let alone a couple blog posts.

If you are interested in learning more about my experience working with ayahuasca and numerous plant & natural medicines in the Amazon, I highly recommend you to reach out to me directly at [email protected] (or DM me on Instagram @neal.bakshi). This was a profoundly life changing experience and I’d love to talk to you more about it!