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Ayahuasca Diet
The ayahuasca diet is about MAOI safety. Caapi and Rue are both MAO inhibitors, and as such can cause potentially dangerous interactions with many prescription drugs and with certain foods. (There is no record of a fatal interaction with food, but people have experienced severe headaches.) There is much information here in the Information forum and in the FAQ about this. If the MAOI safety diet is observed, Ayahuasca is completely safe physically.
Indians in the Amazon will not tell you about this safety diet, because almost nothing on the list of proscribed foods, except bananas, is in their traditional diet anyway, nor do they take the contradindicated prescription drugs. So MAOI interaction is not an issue to them.
Instead, in the Amazon, what they focus on is dieta.
Dieta is for spiritual purposes. It is intended to sensitize your body to the Vine. (Indeed, to sensitize your body to Plant communication in general.)
To the Indians, Ayahuasca is the Vine, and the admixtures are the Vine’s helpers, which help you to see what the Vine is doing more clearly. They consider sensitizing your body to the Vine to be at least as important as the admixtures.
There are three general forms of the dieta that I know of: the regular dieta, the dieta for an apprentice shaman, and the dieta for a person undergoing healing.
All of these dietas are similar. They all contain the basic prohibitions:
- no hot peppers (considered very antagonistic to Ayahuasca)
- no onions or garlic (considered to repel spirits)
- no spices in general, but most of all no hot spices
- no salt
- no pork
- no fried foods
- no sexual stimulation
There are many local/tribal variants. Some say no fats at all, while others restrict only pork fat. Some say no red meat. Some versions prohibit sugar. Some prohibit alcohol. Some versions restrict fruits; some prohibit acidic fruits. Some traditions place more emphasis on pre-ceremony dieta, other traditions stress post-ceremony dieta more. But these are variations on an overall common theme.
The Ayahuasca dieta is not merely healthy or cleansing. It may not even be the healthiest diet conceivable, since it is based on starches like manioc, potatoes, and white rice (brown rice is practically unknown in the Amazon) and small amounts of meat or fish for protein. It also permits plantains, a type of banana, which theoretically would be prohibited by the MAOI-safety diet.
Essentially, the dieta is bland and tasteless. A period of tasteless food and of avoiding sexual stimulation or excitement, during the meditative pre- and post-Ayahuasca period, is considered to helpsensitize the body and spirit to Ayahuasca. (And beyond Ayahuasca, the dieta can be used to sensitize one to communication with other plants.)
Significantly, the sexual fast is a constant among every Ayahuasca-using indigenous culture I know of.Outside of the context of Ayahuasca, the sexual customs of different Amazonian groups are all over the map, but all groups I know of link sexual abstinence to Ayahuasca ceremonies and Ayahuasca shamanism. The Napo Runa, at least (the group that I live with) emphasize the importance of sexual abstinence more than the food aspect of dieta.
The shaman’s apprentice dieta, in addition to the basic restrictions, has no fruit or sugar and restricts the species of meat and fish that can be consumed. A shaman’s dieta might allow only wild meat, or meat only of certain kinds of wild fowl. Fish with teeth may be forbidden, as these are considered to be scavengers of garbage. The shaman’s dieta includes intermittent periods (sometimes ten days or more) of complete fasts on water only.
The dieta for a person being healed is prescribed by the shaman specifically for that person. It may include, besides the basic food and sex restrictions, one or more of the following: no hot (in temperature) foods or drinks; no bathing in hot water, or conversely, no bathing in cold water or shocking the body with cold; no jostling of the body, or no jerky movements of the body, only smooth, slow movement. This may be prescribed for a person to follow for two to seven days after a healing.
There is usually no set number of days for dieta before and after an Aya ceremony. The Indians seem to regard it as that the more days on dieta, the more results you will get, so how long you do it is up to you.
An apprentice shaman among the Napo Runa may spend two years or more on dieta (including a strict sexual fast), much of that time drinking Ayahuasca daily alone in an isolated power place. One apprentice shaman explained to me that you are living in the spirit world, and sensory stimulation would pull you back into your body. This may give a clue as to the meaning and purpose of the regular dieta as well.
The Indians usually fast on the day of the ceremony, although it is not a very strict fast and they don’t seem to care if someone nibbles fruit. In the fasting period before an Ayahuasca ceremony, they drink Wayusa (Ilex guayusa) a rainforest cousin of Yerba Mate. Wayusa is often drunk before sleeping in order to have clearer dreams, and is drunk upon awaking very early in order to have clearer dream recall. Drinking it before an Ayahuasca journey helps promote greater clarity in the journey. Wayusa also helps somewhat to quiet hunger pangs.
For a person from the “modern” world preparing for an Aya journey on their own, an adaptation of the traditional Amazonian dieta might be boiled rice, potatoes, or manioc (aka cassava or yuca) and boiled organic free-range chicken or fish, all prepared without salt, spices or other flavoring. Food on the dieta should be bland and tasteless. (The Napo Runa call the dieta in their language sasina or fasting, even though
food is consumed; it is conceived of as a type of fast.) Sexual stimulation should be avoided during this time, even physical contact with the opposite sex. The fasting from flavorful food and sexual stimulation is considered to help make one “transparent” to plant communication in general and to the healing action of Ayahuasca in particular.
And although this is not an issue to the Indians, for people in the modern world, I feel certain that dieta also includes fasting from television and radio. It is taken for granted by the Indians that the dieta is a time of meditation, reflection and quiet. The Indians don’t emphasize that aspect because they have abundant opportunity for quiet and meditation in their everyday lives. Quiet moments for them are not in precious short supply the way they are to most modern people. But if you are going to follow the dieta, the days on dieta should be days of quiet, meditation, and reflection.