Finding inner peace may be an over-used phrase, but how do we achieve it? Asking a psychologist may provide a lot of answers and suggestions, but if you are longing for a quick, but effective way to slay your inner demons it might lead you to distance places, or more precisely to Peru. Our friend Juliane Späte dared to travel into the jungle and into her deepest anxieties at the same time. During workshops with experienced shamans — and sometimes a handful of celebrities as well — you receive treatment through drinking Ayahuasca, the “vine of soul.” The shamans have boiled down this brew from Amazonian plants containing hallucinogenic DMT (dimethyltryptamine) for centuries. Thanks to other ingredients in the tropical plants the mind-expanding ingredients circulate freely throughout your body. Ayahuasca heightens your body’s capacity to utilize natural serotonin. Sounds dangerous? To indigenous people the juice is comparable to an herbal tea: a natural medicine, without any risk. But as a contemporary European it might change your world-view, especially your self-perception. With that goal in mind and a healthy level of curiosity, Juliane Späte decided to set off on this adventure alone. After stumbling into a high position in the frenetic fashion industry at a very early age and dissuaded by its “downsides,” Späte began her journey to find answers to questions that have plagued her since she was a young girl. We met her and asked her to share her personal experience about the “break from the ego.”
How did you come to travel to Peru?
A pattern of stumbling into certain things without knowing what I was getting myself into seems to have always gone along with a lot of my decisions. The journey to Peru began with the founding of my scouting agency. I thought — if this is so easy, we should do this on a more professional basis. So we created an online scouting platform. But at 23, having just finished my studies, I soon felt like I constantly had to function for others.
Why was this the case?
Building up a modeling career demands a lot of strategy, patience, and sometimes even educational skills on the part of the agent. Most of the guys we discovered only did it for fun alongside their studies. But there were also the types that immediately wanted to break into Hollywood and didn’t have a clue about the industry. This can be quite frustrating. At the forefront there were conversations with clients that made me think,“What is going wrong here?” You discover a great potential model and all you get to hear is: “Sorry, his chin is too long,” or “Um, he’s great, but his nose is a little bit too German.” A part of me started to feel very critical about what I was doing. These circumstances clashed with questions that came from a completely different background. I lost my mother, who I was very close to, at the age of 12. She was in her 40s and it was shocking. This loss evoked a very early realization of mortality in me. Not in a rational sense when you are reminded that there is an end to your life. That thought can easily be pushed aside. I mean the certainty that I am going to die someday on an emotional level that set my teeth on edge.
And were you afraid to die early?
The fear wasn’t necessarily present at all times, but I think subconsciously the pressure grew, the constant thought that my time is limited. One day a friend of mine gave me a book called A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and said, “I think you should read this.”
It’s basically a non-dogmatic manual about how to release yourself from identification with your thoughts and the constant demands of life. It somehow puts your focus back on the present moment and reminds you how your way of thinking is influenced by your cultural and educational background. The mere acknowledgement that my ego permanently labels everything was somehow very releasing.
So, because of this book you decided to drop out?
Well, it started more with a new state of awareness that, in my case, had to do with the book. I’ve never felt more awake. You get up in the morning and see every little detail sharper than ever — every breath, every thought, every behavior, weakness and strength, and those of the people around you. The decision to “drop out” came about half a year later, after my residence in New York. I took photo courses at the School of Visual Arts to be able to push our agency website forward professionally. On the way into Manhattan I was hoping that this machine would spit me out in one piece. I was stunned by how many people were dissatisfied in the fashion industry, especially those that seemed to have everything. It made me wonder what I was really striving for. When I returned to Germany I had to apply for loans to turn the scouting platform into an agency. I realized that if I took this risk, I needed to feel at ease with my self. But I didn’t. So I decided to hand the project over to someone else.
And then you went to Peru on your own and did the workshop in a shamanic temple?
At this time, the Ayahuasca shamanism was discussed a lot among my friends, since one of them had worked as a volunteer at a temple in Peru. I started to do some research. It was the fact that this particular temple offers rituals with up to seven Shamans at once, mainly women, that made me want to take part.
How did the workshop start?
The Temple of the Way of Light is a retreat in the northern part of the Peruvian Amazon that offers Ayahuasca healing rituals with shamans from the Shipibo clan. A workshop typically consists of about 20 people from all over the world. To get the best possible effect out of these healing rituals you have to prepare yourself with a special diet. No salt, sugar, spices, diary, animal fats, and no sexual activity.
Is that difficult?
Yes, unbelievably so. (laughs) But after a while you feel incredibly balanced. I met all the other participants in Iquitos, the nearest jungle city, from there we took a boat into the rain forest, then it was an hour walk to the temple. Upon arrival, the shamans, four women and two men, warmly welcomed us. They gave us each a flower bath, which means, they throw buckets filled with water and pounded flowers over your head. Backpack gone, swimsuit on, you sit stripped bare on a bench with all these flowers in your hair. There’s no space for any kind of ego. The resort is simple, but incredibly beautiful. Everyone sleeps in huts around an artificial lake. I shared mine with a lovely lady from L.A. She was the personalassistant to a billionaire and wanted to escape from her materialistic life. There is a hut for meals with a little library and a residential area for volunteers and shamans. Group sessions and ceremonies take place in a big hut in the middle of the resort, the Maloka. You spend a lot of time there. Hammocks are installed and you can read, paint, think, relax, anything you feel like doing. At first everybody sits together and people explain their reasons for coming. This feels strange, because most are very personal reasons. After that you get a one on one consultation with the shamans, to introduce your intentions for the workshop.
How would you describe the effect of Ayahuasca?
Ayahuasca is a brew made out of the Ayahuasca liana, which is a climbing tropical plant, and a shrub called Chakruna used in healing rituals. Chakruna contains a psychoactive substance called DMT, which is a natural product that also exists in the human body. DMT has hallucinogenic effects and can evoke strong visions, even out of body experiences. When consumed, it is usually catabolized by the body’s own enzymes quickly, but the Ayahuasca liana contains MAO inhibitors so the DMT will stay in your body longer.
What was your intention?
I wanted to work on the part of myself that constantly seeks the meaning of life and to come to peace with the pressure I was putting myself through.
What happens in a ritual? Were there specific daily routines that you could describe?
A description of my personal experiences in the ceremonies could probably be compared to the effort of explaining rock ‘n’ roll to someone who doesn’t know what sound is. But I will try to give you an impression. A workshop takes two weeks and you participate in seven ceremonies that can last up to five hours each. During the day you practice Yoga, meditate, get flower baths, go for walks with the shamans, and learn about plant medicine or you discuss your experiences with the others. That is pretty intense and we had an incredible group dynamic. We bonded from the first day at the cleansing ritual, called Vomitivo. You meet at seven o’clock in the morning to drink so much water that you have to throwup — in front of everybody! At nine pm everyone gathers in the Maloka. Mattresses are rounded up in a circle. The shamans sit in the middle. They decide how much you get to drink. The shamans drink it too, to be able to work with you, but a lot less. The ceremony takes place in total darkness. After 45 minutes the effect sets in. At this point the shamans start with their Icaros, nature songs that are their main working tool. Shamans are taught the Icaros during their plant diets; when they spend their time in isolation and only eat the plant whose spirit they want to connect with. This is repeated throughout their lives. Besides strong visions, Ayahuasca can evoke a large variety of reactions, which are considered to have cleansing effects — laughter, tears, yawning, strange noises, contorted movements, or puking. I mainly cried when the Icaros started. The shamans sat in front of us one after the other and sang. I felt uncannily sensitive to all noise. As if every little part of my organism was able to hear everything down to the spiders outside the Maloka knitting their webs. And then the visions hit. But it’s not as if you are watching a movie — you are in the film. I left my body and could see myself sitting on the mattress from about a meter above my head. From time to time I thought I was drifting away, but the shamans seemed to know what they were doing, blowing smoke in my face, tapping at me, guiding me in a certain directionwith their voices. They can intensify the things you go through, establish an order, or let things disappear. Now imagine six people doing that to you in a row. The women seemed to concentrate on my childhood loss since this was the scenario that came again and again. In the second ceremony they gave me a little bit more to drink and I reached a state that no words can possibly describe. Neither time nor space or language existed. It was a non-verbal state of being. That was incredibly scary and funny at the same time, because I wanted to tell everybody, but couldn’t, because there was no way to communicate. Naturally I panicked, but fear only incorporates itself into your visions. However, if you notice it you can confront it and if you are lucky it begins to dissolve. At some point I had to run to the toilet and couldn’t go back to the Maloka, because I just couldn’t. So they send a shaman in who was supposed to “sing me down.” This would have made great movie material. Me with my pants down and next to me a shaman on a plastic chair, singing, tapping, puffing. That is what I call real altruism. Surprisingly, after a while I was completely normal, had a good laugh, and went straight to bed. Of course I was the running gag for the rest of the time. So that’s basically how I made my way through 12 days of jungle camp. A very warm atmosphere prevailed over everything, but after a while you are so exhausted that all you want is salty, spicy food and civilization.
What happened after the workshop?
I went hiking in Cusco with a great bunch of people from the temple. That was the most exhausting part of the journey. I hadn’t thought about the stress of elevation. Suddenly I found myself 5000 meters above sea level with nothing but nature, fog, and silence. Breathing is hard at those heights and some of us got altitude sickness. At night I had to throw up, and only made it to the feet of my tent mates while it was raining cats and dogs. But we had to keep on going. Physically and mentally it was a real borderline experience and a whole other level of ego confrontation.
Did the process bring clarity? What was your personal conclusion when you came home?
At first I was disappointed, since I hadn’t found any concrete answers. It just felt as if some door had opened up, without me knowing where it was and how it would help me in my everyday reality. On the whole it wasn’t easy to reintegrate. Everybody was curious about my experiences, but most of them had this preconceived notion of shamanism. I couldn’t even resent it. If you’ve never come in contact with shamanism, it will simply sound like some mystic hocus-pocus. If you truly want to understand what happens out there, it takes more than one conversation. So I avoided talking about it too much. Nevertheless the everyday situations in Berlin made me laugh a lot. A barefoot drunk came up and accosted me on my first day back. And I could only think: “What on earth is your problem?” It’s these little things that made me realize how hard it is for me to get out of my skin.
And what do you think about shamanism now after the whole trip?
I take a relatively neutral position. I know quite a lot of people that have worked with shamans. Some of them show a tendency towards creating ideologies after having taken Ayahuasca and projecting them onto the community. My experience was personal — I wouldn’t dare weave together a universal theory. It’s where belief and disbelief start. Beyond that, one shouldn’t forget that DMT is an entheogen, which can serve as a highly manipulative tool. One can easily start idealizing the shaman as the noble savage who has all the wisdom that western civilization lost on the way to modernity. But generally I am very grateful for everything I have been shown by the shamans. Living and dying is a very natural process for these people. One thing I’ve realized is that once you’ve come to terms with your fear of the inevitable fact of death or loss, you will see your very own reality from a completely different angle.
Do you have a maxim or a thought that you like to think back on?
I am a huge R.M. Rilke fan and always come back to his Letters to a Young Poet, in which it says, “Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is,to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you win then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” But other than that, in a moment of struggle the participant with probably the worst story I’ve ever heard, gave me a piece of paper with “FEAR as in F alse E vidence A ppearing R eal.” I still think about that fondly today.
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