The Diet

Paul Eijkemans
If there is one single area within the world of the sacred plant medicines that causes tremendous confusion it is the diet that needs to be kept to enjoy a plant ceremony. I sometimes receive emails that have been sent in the middle of the night by people that are unable to sleep out of fear that they have eaten something for which the spirit of the plants will severely punish them. To prevent this from happening, or let alone that in the future they will start calling me at those times, I will elaborate more on the diet for Natem ceremonies. It is also good to know that, of course, these plants do not punish anyone. They are medicines. But lets first talk about food and food intake. The other day I watched an Oprah Winfrey show with three really fat ladies who placed themselves on her couch. The couch could barely hold their weight. They almost even launched Oprah, who was sitting at the opposite edge of the couch and is not the smallest person herself, into the air. They chatted about their eating habits and one said that she only went for a Number Two once a week. I had trouble believing that, given her size and the probable enormous amounts of food that she consumed every day. Then again, maybe she was just about to do a Number Two and would have lost half of her size in the process; I secretly hoped that that would happen during the show. Can you imagine? Before the commercial break you have someone the size of the late Barry White sitting on your couch; and someone like Tyra Banks after the commercial break. Magical! David Copperfield could probably not have bettered that. Apparently this lady did not realise how strange, and how equally constipated, the infrequency of her bathroom visits were. She also complained about being tired and constantly unmotivated, but did not relate that in any way to the size of her humongous body and her non-lacking motivation to stuff it full of garbage all day. I was surprised that she did not have several milkshakes in her hands during the show to keep her going. It felt as if I was not watching the Oprah Winfrey show but a Punch and Judy puppet show instead; where everyone in the audience clearly sees the villain standing behind Mr. Punch but he does not see that himself. Generally in life it is wise to change your ways if things are not working out for you, or if you do not work out. You do need awareness to logically connect your behaviour with the desired or undesired end-results of that behaviour. It helps to cultivate that awareness because it can prevent you from becoming trapped into an unhealthy body! We live in a time when mankind ironically has more tools than ever to stay healthy. There are also an ever increasing number of people that have become disconnected with their bodies. I hope that you, as a potential upcoming plant medicine healer, do not suffer from such a disconnection: a deep and intimate connection with your body is necessary to do plant medicine work. The more you connect with your body, the more you can ground down into it. The more you do this, the further you can travel into the energetic space behind the physical and do your energy healing work. The only way to have an out-of-body experience is to have an in-the-body experience first; it comes with connecting deeply to your body and your bodily functions. One way of creating a great connection with the body is to optimise your diet. Unfortunately, the food intake of many people is of extremely poor quality, to say the least.

Lets face it. It is so bad that in the oh, so hailed spiritual year of 2012, we as humankind have indeed reached a new level of consciousness. For the first time in history more people on this planet have died from diseases that are related to overeating than people have died from hunger. People are getting fatter and unhealthier much more quickly than they have ever done in the past. With fatter I do not mean plus-size people like the giant men from Polynesia or the Big Mamas that I have seen in Africa, who are usually relatively healthy. I am talking about those who fill their surplus bodies with toxic fats full of chemicals, not those that have natural fats that provide protection against invading energies and can be used as fuel for the body. People are rapidly becoming unhealthier, even in spite the fact that health food shops pop up like mushrooms on a rainy autumn day. It perfectly demonstrates how duality within unity works as everything is always in balance: for every person getting more enlightened there are also a hundred other people that get a bit more stupid in order to bring things into balance again. So, in comparison, if you really want to help other people, please stop your senseless quest for enlightenment so that others do not have to become stupid and have to suffer because of you. If you are really smart and have a heart, you would better remove yourself from this planet to help others in their development! People also seem to get unhealthier on a mental level because of what they put into their bodies, and this includes children. An increasing number of them have Ritalin prescribed to numb them although the inventor of the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD, Leon Eisenberg, admitted on his deathbed that it is a fictitious disease and that he made it all up. Ritalin damages various organs and can cause psychosis and depression, but apparently the general opinion is that one cannot start too early with them. These chemicals are just as damaging as most of the additives that can be found in the foodstuff that many people eat, but most people seem to think that it is normal that their food should contain chemicals. Many of these food additives make people numb, depressed or aggressive. Loutish behaviour is of all times but the strong increase that I have seen in the past two decades is, in my opinion, strongly related to the rich assortment of chemicals put into foodstuffs, that ultimately influence bodily processes and thus emotional wellbeing. There is a good reason to be careful with what you put into your system. The physical component of food is used to construct and maintain your physical body, and the energetic component of food is used to create and sustain your energetic body. In that regard you are what you eat but should not need to take that too literally. Vegetarians poke fun at pork eaters by pointing this out to them, but they tend to forget that they themselves eat nuts and eggs. Your brain is a great tool for controlling the intelligent robot, the physical body. The brain helps to compartmentalise and in this way to put things in order. Not that I believe that thinking itself is done in the brain; the way I look at it is that the capacity of intelligence and thinking ultimately is delivered through the energy fields in the vast space beyond the physical which is cultivated over eons. The brain is only there to make sure that this energy remains focused within this object-dominated world that we live in. In my view it does that by translating between the holographic-like energetic reality beyond the physical and the object-based reality within the physical. Hopefully one day I will be able to prove my theory, but I need science to build me an instrument to do so. We also own something that can be called the second brain. It is the massive network of neurons that line the guts. There are about 100 million of these neurons, more than in the spinal cord or peripheral nervous system. It not only handles digestion, but also plays an important role in setting

the emotional state of a person. Love goes through mans stomach, and this occurs primarily because of the second brain. In ceremonies shamans make good use of this extensive and sensitive network. With it, you can sense energies in the space around you, which is where the term gut feeling comes from. It is one of the reasons why shamans like to keep their intestines healthy because they are one of the most important tools that they use in their work. One of the ways they keep their guts healthy is by keeping to specific diets within their traditions. There are many diets than can be discussed and I would like to make a start with the most common one, vegetarianism. I am a vegetarian too, but definitely not when eating. There are many vegetarians in this world, but frankly speaking the plants themselves are not among them: insects crawl up and around plants and when they die their cells go into the soil from which the plants obtain their nutrients. Given the abundance of plants on this planet, our green friends are probably the largest group of carnivores in the world. If you eat plants you are automatically disqualified as a vegetarian because you are eating meat at the same time. So you might as well quit the behaviour of not eating meat altogether because you are already doing it by eating plants. Vegans are a subset of vegetarians; they also do not eat eggs. I once met one who told me that he was disgusted by the idea of eating something that had come out of the body of something. I replied to him that I did not share his disgust for such things, and it certainly did not stop me from actually chatting without disgust with something that had come out of the vagina of his mother. Sometimes people ask me why I am not a vegetarian but can still do the energetic things that I do, such as reading and moving energy. I always give them the answer that they should turn the questions around and ask themselves why is it that they are vegetarians and cannot do the things that I can do. Better eat some chicken. Some of these people are so caught up in their rigorous food choice that they start lecturing others, about how being a vegetarian is the ultimate spiritual practice. After I have reminded them that Adolf Hitler probably qualifies as the most well-known vegetarian, I point out and in that way sometimes anger them that the Dalai Lama, who can perhaps be seen as an authority in spiritual matters, also eats chicken now and then because he knows that it is healthy for him. Some then start to whine that one should not kill animals and that therefore vegetarianism is indeed the ultimate spiritual practice; but to scramble your daily plant meal together you equally have to kill some of our green friends. Science and plant lovers can tell you that plants have feelings too, just like animals. Then they say that another reason for not eating meat is the horrible lives that animals that are raised in the bio-industry have had. We have finally found some common ground, as I do not eat meat produced by the bio-industry either. Many people tend to forget that everything is situational. If not eating meat works for you then please do not eat meat. If eating meat works, please eat it. But never make a dogmatic drama out of it because in that way you only create problems for yourself and for others. The energies of drama are far more damaging to your energy system than not keeping to a specific diet, let alone putting those energies in other people by doing your drama. The reality that I see in vegetarians is that the vast majority of them lack the physical strength to do true medicinal plant work. They have flack bodies without any protective fat and with the slightest surge of energies in the space they fall to the ground. They simply are not well connected to their bodies because of their delusional eating habits. If you conduct plant medicine ceremonies it is much better to eat meat, with poultry as your main type of animal protein and fish a good second.

The indigenous Shuar consider vegetarianism to be something truly weird. When you tell them that you do not eat meat they will immediately ask you compassionately about the specific disease that you have because why otherwise would you stick to a strict diet of only plants? For this reason you will not encounter a Shuar who is a vegetarian because if he or she is, automatically this person is disqualified from being a Shuar. The Shuar are the opposite of vegetarians; they eat anything with four legs, except maybe the table and the dog. Of course they do not eat dogs. Their hunting dogs bring them food stuff from the rainforest so why kill and eat the goose with the golden eggs, even if it tastes great, which dog actually does. These dogs are especially efficient in digging out armadillos that are extremely tasty if well cooked. Now, I am not in favour of taking bush meat from the rainforest to cook into an extremely delicious mouth-watering meal, but I also think that it is inappropriate to lecture people about their eating habits if they have been tending to them for at least ten thousand years or more. They need to find out for themselves and such it is not for lecturing on anyone elses eating habits, a habit which people that keep certain diets have a tendency of pursuing. The eating habits of the Shuar include eating many types of fish. They catch some in the nearby rivers but many Shuar families also have a large pond near the house where fish are cultivated, usually tilapia and trout. Keeping fish as a pet is completely alien to them; fish is a food and nothing else. I once rented a house that had a large aquarium in, how appropriate, the kitchen. I also had Miguel Chiriap over from his rainforest; a forest which could aptly be called the largest freeloaders supermarket in the world. On one morning I found him staring intensely at the different kinds of goldfish in the tank while licking his lips. He knows very well what an aquarium is but just to make sure that he did not fall back into Shuar habits and that I would have ended up with an angry landlord, I explained to him that these fish were not for eating but only for decorative purposes only. He regretfully agreed. One other exciting food source that the rainforest provides is insects. Insects are a great source of proteins and despite their sometimes deterring appearance they most of the times taste great. I would not be surprised if given the antipathy that is developing in our world against keeping cows, pigs and poultry, that in the future insects become a major alternative food source to feed populations. Their strokability factor is at least a lot lower than the animals that have a bit more personality. Many types of insect delicacies can be found in the rainforest in Shuar territory. One of such insect delicacy is a fat maggot named mukin that lives in and eats on the inside of the Chonta Palm. At a steep US$ 1 per piece these maggots are by bodyweight probably the most expensive edible insect in the world, but their gooey insides tastes delicious and is worth the price. You can eat them deep fried but most Shuar will prefer them raw. Another delicacy are flying ants, called wek in Shuar. They collectively make their nests in the ground and half an hour of digging and sifting quickly yields a kilo or so of them; one kilo of yummy protein rich food. Yet another tasteful insect is a water insect called tsappak. They are normally poisonous but if you cook them the poison is neutralized and they can be safely eaten. To eat them you take the insect in your hand, pull off its claw-bearing head which also removes the bitter tasting intestines, dip the body in salt and put it in your mouth. It is like caviar from the rainforest; you will never ever taste anything so delicious in your life. As ugly as the insect looks from the outside, it tastes so palatable and crunchy in your mouth. Such is the same of course when visiting a plant medicine ceremony. If you tell your friends that you are going to such

a ceremony or retreat and that when you are there you will vomit your guts out, they will all tell you that you are crazy; but the reality is, of course, that in the morning everyone that participated is happy that they did it. Some people might have already eaten insects without realising it. Ever eaten Skittles when you were young? For years the red ones were coloured with Carmine, which is a red food-colouring that comes from boiled Cochineal bugs, a type of beetle that lives in South-America and Mexico. Another insect product that is sometimes used in candy production is the sticky secretions of the female species of the Thai beetle Kerria lacca, a substance that is called Shellac; it is used to give several brands of jelly beans their shiny coating. Thus when talking about food additives, people usually think about chemical components but that does not necessarily need to be the case. In a 2011 David Lettermanshow TV-chef Jamie Oliver revealed that vanilla-flavouring in some dairy products is achieved by using Castoreum, a food additive aroma that comes from rendered beaver anal glands: apparently it makes ice cream taste great. It is hundred percent natural and mankind have been using it for more than eighty years for this purpose: like Jamie I wonder how people found out in the first place that the anal glands of a beaver taste great. Unless you are a vegan or a vegetarian, there is no reason to shun these natural food additives. What is to shun though, are many other, chemical, additives, that interestingly enough are approved by governmental food watchdogs: many artificial colours are made from coal-tar derivatives and are known to cause allergic reactions; artificial sweeteners can have a negative impact on ones metabolism and has been linked to cancer, and Benzoate preservatives can cause hyperactivity: these are only a few of a long list of additives to avoid. Foulcriers would probably immediately come up with Big Food conspiracy theories, but personally I feel that a combination of lack of manpower at governmental institutions and the long lead times of thorough research are more to blame. In any case, one who is on the path of the sacred plant medicines will notice that the sensitivity of his or her body will increase, and thus become more sensitive to the use of chemical food additives. So better be able to decipher the label in order to avoid negative reactions of your body to food. This increased sensitivity due to frequent cleansing using the sacred plants might also show up in another way. Any female with a nickel or gold allergy can regretfully explain you that the human body can also absorb nutrients through its skin, the human bodys largest organ. Research has shown that the skin absorbs about sixty percent of the substances that are applied topically. I personally experienced this when I regularly became slightly nauseous after taking a shower following a ceremony: by changing shampoos this nausea vanished. For this reason I use as much as possible shampoos and skin products that only contain natural ingredients, including products such as deodorants. The mechanism of absorption through the skin is also widely used in the various medicinal plant treatments that can be found in Shuar culture: the Shuar have many treatments that are based on rubbing shredded leaves into the skin or on bathing in plant extracts. Once I subjected to a Maikuamamu ritual, a profound Shuar ritual in which the essence of the Datura-plant is ingested to invoke a comatose condition of several days in which one enters the spirit world. While waiting for the effects of the consumed juice to settle in, Miguel rubbed the shredded leafs of the plant all over my body to make it absorb additional plant essence. To be able to sense energies in space the intestines of a shaman are of extreme importance. A great opportunity to dive into this subject was given to me in one of the ceremonies when my attention

was guided to Miguels intestines. With the energy of the medicine I was transported into the micro-organism systems there and was explained how they worked and interacted. I was shown the relationship between the micro-organism colonies inhabiting the intestines and energy healing capabilities. I saw that the micro-world of bacteria and fungus that Miguel has in his digestive track, being an indigenous from the rainforest, perfectly mimics the macro-world of this same rainforest through the food he eats. In other words, if you look at the energy of the bacteria in his guts you will see that they have pretty much the same energies that can be found in the rainforest itself. Each of these bacteria has a small energy field and since there are 100 trillion of them in the gut, many small make a large one. They represent a part of the energetic capacity that he has, something that all other humans beings also have if they take good care of their guts. I also saw that a lot of his healing power can actually be attributed to the fact that he has these energies in him, because he can use the rainforest related energies to move other less healthy energies out of energy systems. He keeps the micro-organisms in his gut in good shape by eating extremely healthily. For this reason he never takes antibiotics that travel through the guts, as it would take him months to rebuild the microcosmos in there. Nor does he need them as he has got his own plants to cure him, of course. Having a strong but delicate intestinal system also means that the smallest deviation from his diet gives him extreme pain. For this and other reasons he hardly ever accepts food offered to him by participants at a ceremony. Another interesting diet is that of raw food, which some perceive as very spiritual. I do not follow that diet because I want to prevent myself becoming anal. At least that is the way that I perceive many of those who follow that diet. Some post pictures of all the raw food meals that they eat on Facebook. Apparently these people need external stimulation to show that they are doing something good. How would it be otherwise possible for them to stick to their, in my opinion, tasteless diet? Usually these people tend to claim that all of us are descended from apes, which is true, and because apes eat their food raw, we should eat it the same way to provide optimal nutrition to our bodies. Through such reasoning they, in my opinion, show a flagrant disregard for the progression of the human spirit and its accompanying body. The ape evolved via various versions into Homo sapiens. They learned how to master fire and how to use it for its own purpose, started to mine ore to create steel weapons and pans to cook food. The only reason that apes ate their food raw was because they did not know how to cook it, and nothing else. Homo sapiens had good reasons for learning to cook. Not only does cooked food usually taste much better than raw food but it also gives a welcoming pleasure to the body through its warmth. However, the most important reason to avoid a raw food diet is that cooking your food will actually help your body to absorb more nutrients. Yes, you read it correctly. Most raw food enthusiasts will tell you that cooking food will destroy at least half of all nutrients in food with essential enzymes being the main victim. Actually, the plants that we eat generally do not contain any enzymes that could catalyse chemical reactions that occur in human beings. To the contrary, cooking your food destroys some of the harmful anti-nutrients that bind minerals in the gut and interfere with the utilization of nutrients. Sure, eating raw food prevents the accumulation of mucus in your intestines but this can easily be countered with an occasional colonic cleansing, the reason for which such and many other techniques exist. There are also several studies that confirm that the bodys uptake of beneficial anti-cancer compounds is four to five times higher if food is properly cooked as compared to eating it raw. You might as well say that eating raw food significantly increases your chance of getting cancer. There you go with your healthy trendy lifestyle: it is all in the mind.

One other interesting folly is that of taking vitamin pills. People eat them like M&Ms, but M&Ms only come in six colours while vitamin pills come in many more. There seems to be a vitamin pill for every situation, for every time of the day and, silly enough, because they are the same chemical compounds for everyone, a vitamin pill for every age group. There are even special vitamin pill boxes with many different compartments to facilitate intake; of course this is not to keep track of them as their manufacturers say they do, but a trick to make your eat more of them. In this way these vitamin pill takers are no less addicted to their vitamins than those who are addicted to chemical medicines, but that does not prevent many of these advocates of good health from ranting against Big Pharma. In reality, of course, they are shouting against the pain that they feel inside themselves for in the same way being addicted to these vitamins. The vitamin industry is like the Mafia. The Mafia comes in to your store, quite persuasively convinces you that you need their protection services. Then they start to squeeze you like a lemon, and if you want to quit the relationship they intimidate you into staying with them. It works the same way for the vitamin pill Mafia. They convince you that you need them, then they make you pay dearly for their products, and if you want to quit your vitamin pill intake they cause great anxiety because through their marketing they subconsciously put a guilt feeling upon you for not taking their products anymore. In reality this energy of anxiety is far more damaging to your energy system than any possible vitamin deficiency that could easily be cured by taking vitamins in a more natural way. The vitamin Mafia is like the real Mafia, although one difference is that for the vitamin pill takers it would be actually great to squeeze a lemon: it contains a lot of vitamin C and would save them a lot of money. You do not take a vitamin pill if you are sick: you are sick if you take a vitamin pill. There has not been a single moment in human history that we had a similar abundance of fresh foods and vegetables available to us as nowadays. Walk into any small neighbourhood supermarket and you will find the most obscure little fruits coming from an equally obscure country in Dark Africa; we did not have that fifty years ago. When Miguel Chiriap comes over from Ecuador and stays with me he can buy the same foodstuff in my local supermarket as he can take out of the rainforest, although in his forest it costs him half an hour to locate it while in my local supermarket he could grab it from a shelf, just like that. Fruit and vegetables contain more than enough vitamins and other good elements to keep us healthy. Over millions of years of evolution the human body has had to constantly adapt itself to situations where not enough, or not healthy enough, food was available. It survived and made our body into the resilient tool that it is. If there is any time in human history where it was absolutely unnecessary to take vitamin pills, it is nowadays. The Byrds sang it very eloquently when they sang that there is a time to laugh, a time to weep and a time to dance. The Byrds understood situationalism. This means that there is a specific time for specific things. Although I did not hear them sing that there was a time for vitamin pills, I do think that their sometimes can be a time for taking them. If your body severely fails you and your organs cannot take enough nutrition from foodstuffs, you take vitamins. Of course you should first try to give it an overload with different kinds of fruits and vegetables, but sometimes you need more than that and then the pills come in handy. The essence of using natural or chemical medicines in a sane way is to be pragmatic: only take it when it is absolutely necessary and if there are no other known alternatives. Of course, Neo also had the choice between a blue pill and a red pill. But at least he realised that he had a choice and chose wisely. Vitamin pill takers also have a choice; a choice to stop

their follies and thus their dramas, but they usually do not see it that way because they really think that they are doing something healthy. To stop their drama they are more than welcome to come to my plant medicine ceremonies and take a real medicine. They have to be aware though: the medicine that I offer comes in a liquid form and not in a pill. Then of course there are the breatharians. These are people that apparently have mastered the art of living solely on prana, the vital life force. They are supposedly at a level at which they do not need physical food anymore. How they do that is a big mystery for me as any normally functioning body burns its own body fat reserves, glycogen and muscle tissue. It is something that inevitably comes with having a body. To prevent this burning happening you have to be in a comatose condition, which some of these people mentally speaking indeed are, and even then the breathing itself to take prana would gradually burn these reserves. Science tells you that you definitely can be a breatharian, but only for a limited time. Do not get me wrong, taking in life force energy is of the utmost importance in everyones life. It is a force provided by the energy that comes from things such as the sun, fresh air and the trees around you. It charges and recharges you. But taking it as your main course is something entirely different to having it as a side salad. Apparently, to get to this ultimate stage of not needing physical food, you have to work your way up through vegetarianism, veganism, raw food and liquidism to finally reach a stage where you can leave this all behind you, including your taste buds. This path gives you a lot of extra energy of course, but the reality is that any path that includes rigorous fasting will do so. So there is this path to follow, but it seems that all of those who follow it get stuck in one of the phases and not one of the aspirants reaches an end goal; out-ofbreath apparently, before being able to be in-to-breath. It is not that I am against breatharianism in itself as it sounds truly exciting. You will never have bad breath again. No acid regurgitation anymore. And if you get hungry you simply grab a cheap candy bar from the sun instead of frantically searching for a Mars bar from a store. You would still have gas though; after all, air is air. I have heard a lot about breatharians recently. It seems that anyone who has an interest in spirituality knows a breatharian who is a neighbour of a cousin of a friend of his dentist. Unfortunately, I have never met any of them in person, although I have been to many different places on this planet. If you actually meet one then send this person over to me: I will give you US$ 100 for the first legitimate one that knocks at my door. That said, I do know a place where you really do not need physical food anymore and where you can most surely find breatharians. It is in the vast energetic reality beyond the physical which is the place where true breatharians go because of their non-eating habits. It must be paradise for them there. There are numerous documented cases of people dying because of malnutrition while trying this diet; so much for that life force of yours. It is, of course, no use for me to invite breatharians to my ceremonies to cure their drama as they would not take a cup of my plants anyway. Maybe they would come if I were to promise them an empty cup? If you are a breatharian, most probably stuck in one of the stages of the path while striving for the ultimate goal to where of course you will never get, and want to challenge what I say here, then there is, of course, only one way to do so: stop eating and drinking and show me. You could also come to one of my ceremonies and take a cup of my medicine so that I can help cure you from your drama. Please do not think that I am taking the piss at all these diets. These are all great diets and combined with their practical purpose they can help you to raise or lose certain energies within your energy

system. I have a lot of respect for them and have even used some of them to learn how to work with energies. For every diet there is a specific time and a specific place. I also have deep respect and a large amount of love for those who use these diets to change the energies inside them and thus work on self-liberation. So, instead I am giving the finger to the people that are mindlessly following these diets for dogmatic reasons. Having a certain diet to prove a point is pretty similar to going on hunger strike, which is also a pretty pointless exercise. In my opinion there are a lot of people who easily buy into the belief systems of others instead of checking within themselves to see if there is a practical need for the diet and how it would benefit them. Subsequently they are parroting these belief systems towards many others and in this way new food hypes are quickly born, with every one of these hypes bringing a new food guru that is invited to sit on Oprahs couch. In reality the only one who benefits from this new diet hype is of course the diet guru himself who is laughing all the way to the bank, himself munching on a Mars bar. Godwins Law dictates that in any online discussion a comparison with Adolf Hitler, or the Nazis, will eventually pop up: something which effectively kills the discussion. So lets kill this discussion on paper here. Mindlessly buying into other peoples belief systems, parroting them and doing damage to oneself and others this way, as is done by many rigorously following these diets, is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany. It is the same mechanism, although, of course, with a very different magnitude; as the powerless bodies of quite a few of these dieters do not in the slightest way resemble the emaciated bodies of those few that were liberated from Auschwitz. It is for this Godwin reason that I have conceived the term Raw Food Nazi, feel free to use it in your daily vocabulary. Some plant medicine circles have long lists, sometimes even several pages long, to clarify which foods should not be taken before and after a specific plant medicine ceremony. They have, of course, every right to do so, but in reality such lists are pretty useless. Participants lose valuable time scrutinizing these lists to see if they can eat something as simple as radish or even more obscure vegetables like parsnip or Jerusalem artichoke, which are probably not even on a list. All the while this time could have been spent meditating on either joining a ceremony or on playing and having fun. The worries of having taken food by accident that could possibly clash with the medicine raise energies of anxiety that are taken into the ceremony and have far more effect than actually eating something bad. It is much better to have a more relaxed approach to things and take those relaxed energies into the ceremony. There are many foods on the forbidden list of Ayahuasca circles of which it is said that they cannot be eaten because of the changed body chemistry that occurs due to taking the medicine. Theory says that this has to do with the fact that certain foods contain tyramine. This is an amino acid of which having large amounts in your body can give you headaches and of which very extreme amounts in rare cases can cause cardiac failure. Tyramine can be found in fermented or ripened foods and is naturally broken down by the body. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors, MAOIs, prevent catabolism of tyramine, but only the Type A MAOIs do this. The MAOIs generally found in Natem are of Type B and will not cause problems. Even if Natem had contained the wrong MAOIs you would still have to eat a few pounds of French cheese or a few kilos of dates to give yourself a headache after taking the medicine. Nobody eats those amounts and you would rather die of overeating first before dying of cardiac failure. Besides, the effects of foods on someones wellbeing differ from person to person and are closely related to the state of health in which someone dwells. It is never possible to give a conclusive list. Additionally, if the medicine would clash with a certain food in your stomach it would

most certainly trigger the body to vomit the food out. So, instead of giving people a large list of foods that they cannot eat or drink and create additional unnecessary anxiety in them, my advice to people is always to become more aware of your body and your intestines and feel for yourself which foods you can take and which foods you cannot. If numbness, anxiety, or stomach pains descend up you after eating a certain food when taken in combination with the medicine, then simply do not eat that food in combination with the medicine. There are incompatibilities, though. At the start of a ceremony I always ask people if they use chemical medicines because some are very dangerous when combined with Natem. Such medicines are, for instance, pharmaceutical MAOIs and serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors, SSRIs, which come in the form of anti-depressant and anti-psychotic medication. The SSRIs are extremely dangerous in combination with the MAOIs contained in Natem. An example of SSRI medication is the widely prescribed Prozac. Combining the two can lead to Serotonin Syndrome which can cause convulsions and even death. For this reason I only allow people who have not been taking antipsychotic or anti-depressant medication for at least three months into my ceremonies, and I make it clear to them that they stand a good chance of dying if they hide it from me out of a desire to participate. Other chemical medicines are relatively safe to take but I always ask participants in a circle to regulate their intake of chemical medicines in such a way that they do not take chemical medicines for twenty four hours before until twenty four hours after a ceremony, just to be sure. The exception to that are, of course, birth control pills which should be taken long before the ceremony starts to prevent them from being vomited out. If someone is on antibiotics I will always start by giving a small amount of medicine first. As far as I know there is nothing written in Ayahuasca literature about possible conflicts between Natem and antibiotics, but Miguel has had problems in the past with several patients and therefore recommends starting with small doses first. If there are no side-effects then I will give that person a normal cup of medicine about two hours later. In reality, anyone who keeps a relatively healthy diet and includes a diverse variety of different foods can participate in a ceremony without any problems. There are, of course, some types of food for which it is better not to eat in the days before and after a ceremony. I am listing them because of my experiences with them, combined with the experiences of Miguel Chiriap and the multiple thousands of people that have visited his ceremonies in the past thirty years. One of these foods is pork which is great to eat; unless of course the pig has a personality, like Arnold on Green Acres. I hardly eat pork, but it is not because I think that pigs have a personality or because I think that they are filthy animals. Mushrooms also have disregard for faeces as well, as they use it to grow and I do not avoid them either. Like dogs; dogs do have personality but in Indonesia I also ate dog, just as Barack Obama did. The reason that I hardly eat pork is that it gives me pimples on the covered sun-lacking parts of my body and it makes my stomach hurt when I eat it before or after drinking the medicine. For that last reason I hardly ever eat beef either. Not that I do not like steak. I actually love it. When I was in India I pretty much looked the same way at their cows as Miguel looked at the fish in my landlords aquarium: a world full of gastronomic possibilities. The only reason then that I did not eat beef is because the religious fanatics would probably have made me next in line for the pyre. Another foodstuff to talk about because it is not compatible with the medicine is milk or products that contain a significant amount of lactose. Lets face it: milk is not meant for human consumption. It is meant to turn a 60 pound newborn calf into a 400 pound cow. Some say that because babies

drink their mothers milk, that milk is actually great for humans. The truth is that dairy milk is made out of a completely different substance to that produced by lactating mothers; unless, of course, your mom was a cow. You do not need to drink milk. Everything nutritional that can be found in milk can also be obtained by eating plants; and by doing so you also keep the bad things in milk out. For example, there are fifty-nine active hormones that are naturally present in cows along with the copious amounts of herbicides, pesticides and dioxins that are normally found in milk. Contrary to popular belief, these substances are not all filtered out in the factory. It is my opinion that because milk is not a good idea, the majority of the worlds population has lactose intolerance, and that the relative tolerance that most Caucasians have is actually an anomaly. Years ago in Holland we had a commercial on television promoting milk in which the punch line was Milk, the White Motor. I have lactose intolerance myself so the punch line aptly describes me and my relationship with milk: the roaring sounds of a Harley Davidson bike and not the puttering of a Vespa scooter could readily be heard coming from the toilet ten minutes after I drank a glass of milk. Whether you have lactose intolerance or not, taking dairy products before or after a ceremony gives stomach pains and invokes nausea so there is a practical reason why it is not recommended to drink or eat dairy products in the days before or after participating in a medicine circle. Garlic is a very powerful plant. After all, Dracula is scared of it. So vampires cannot stand garlic; but to be honest, who can? I once heard about a specific garlic diet with which you supposedly could lose a lot of weight. I am sure that you indeed look much thinner being watched from a larger distance by your friends. Garlic is also a plant that clashes with the medicine. The reason for this is that garlic purifies the blood. Natem also cleans the blood. Two captains on the one ship that is called your bloodstream, brings trouble: it makes you feel anxious and your whole mouth will start to uncomfortably tingle in combination with the medicine. Another related vegetable that is not wise to eat before and after the ceremony is onion because it lowers the energy in the body when taken with Natem. The other reason that I ask people that come to my ceremonies to not eat onions is that in combination with the medicine it makes people produce gas massively. I do not know about your working environment but I do not want mine to smell like a piggery either. Then there is of course the logical small stuff. I ask people not to drink alcohol before the ceremony, because I want people to be sober throughout the proceedings; though Miguel and I regularly drink a large glass of red wine in the morning after a ceremony. This is to help us to rebalance the energies of the Natem so that we are able to sleep and get some rest. If you are trapped in a belief system that the sacredness of the medicine does not allow alcohol to interfere, then you do not recognise that alcohol has a similar sacredness because it is also a medicine. I also ask people not to eat very greasy or spicy food before or after the ceremony as it has an effect on the feeling of wellbeing of the intestines. In my humble opinion it is only the Thai and the Indians that have been born with a set of intestines that can endure spicy food; the rest of us have to suffer from the adage that a good curry is always enjoyed twice. A good Natem too, by the way, though differently. It goes without saying that all types of drugs, and that does indeed include marihuana, are also on the list of forbidden temptations. Some people actually come to the ceremonies to be cured from their drug addictions so we do not want these energies to interfere with their process. During the ceremony we add tobacco to that list because its energy is not compatible with the ceremony. I mean tobacco and not Tobacco; the first is the chemical garbage that Marlboro puts into its cigarettes, the latter is the sacred Mapacho that does have its use within Natem ceremonies.

Except for what I have said about chemical medicines, one can be pretty relaxed about his or her diet with regards to the medicine. That is, however, different if you are participating in a specific cleansing ritual such as the Natemamu ritual that is held in the rainforest of Ecuador, or if you are studying with a real master to acquire certain energies. In those moments it is of the utmost importance to keep to the prescribed diet because it can cost you your life if you do not keep to it. Such a diet is kept to make sure that the energies that are raised in the ritual or during the teaching process are optimally integrated, instead of them turning bad and turning against the participant. I know a story of one of Miguels students who was around in the kitchen when guatusa, a large rodent that of course was not on the white list of the students diet, was prepared by the family. Now, not a single person in its right mind would want to come close to the aroma of this animal, except the Shuar of course, because they consider the animal a true delicacy. But in the kitchen the smell was inescapable and this got him into trouble: by inhaling the aroma of the animal for just a few moments he also took in its energies and it made him feel bad for days. It also affected him in the ceremonies where he constantly vomited, but was not able to vomit out the energy of the animal from his system. He finally decided to remove the energies of the rodent out of his body by taking Tobacco juice anally, which is a great technique to effectively remove energies from your energy system. It indeed crawled out through there. There are a lot of people that think that you need to fast massively before a Natem ceremony. We once had a lady who had fasted for three consecutive days: she almost passed out during the night. Let me speak the decisive words on this. How to fast and in which form depends on your purpose. I usually ask people to have their last meal in the early afternoon because for most people that simply works the best. However, if you want the medicine to deeply work in you then it is better to fast for the day and eat only a light meal in the afternoon; but you have to take into account that it will be much harder to vomit without having anything in your stomach, and that it will be much harder to consciously stay with the medicine until the end of the ceremony because of the lack of energy that you will have. Those who want to make a vomit fiesta out of the ceremony, or have troubles with conserving their energies, are more than welcome to have a small last meal at the beginning of the evening. This will give them more energy to endure the ceremony and to stay awake longer. Most masters who conduct ceremonies choose the latter approach because they need the energy of the food to keep going all throughout the night, despite all the energy that the medicine will bring them. There are several reasons why I hardly eat any processed food. The first reason is that there are usually a lot of chemicals in processed food, and I want to keep my body and mind as clean as possible. Of course, I do occasionally eat monosodium glutamate drenched potato chips, only to be reminded twenty minutes later why I should not, through the anxiety that is brought in by eating them. The second reason why I do not like eating processed food, and which is strongly related to the first reason, is that in my view all physical food comes with an energetic component to it. This energetic component is influenced by those who handle the food and thus by the essence of those who transform it from Mother Earth created to human- created foodstuffs. Their essence enters the food and will be picked up by your energy system. It should not come as any surprise to you that because I see things this way it is my desire to limit the amount of energies of mass-industry into my system, either chemical or biological. One reason why I do not like the bio-industry is because animals are treated so poorly. A more important reason not to like that industry is because eating

their meats can make me feel very sick, not only on the physical level but also on an energetic level because I would be taking in these energies of maltreatment and the resulting anxiety and fear. This is the relationship between the physical and the spiritual and if you aware of this relation then it prevents food from being eaten that will damage your physical, energetic or spiritual body. Silly? Maybe, but it works very well for me as in this way I use what I energetically feel about a person or industry who prepares food, to keep me safe from taking in the energies of anxiety and fear, or any other harmful energies coming with that food. These are energies that are much more difficult to be aware of than the apparent likeability of someone or something. In essence, if I for some reason or other do not like the person that has prepared food then I will not eat the food, how tasty or delicious it might look. If you erroneously suffer from the need to know if I like you, then the only thing that you have to do is to serve me a delicious dish. The other is also true; when I once came back from the rainforest from a Natemamu ritual and a friend of mine had prepared spareribs I happily accepted his delicious food because although pork was on the blacklist, it was made with love. It is also for this reason that I have two wonderful open hearted ladies in charge of the kitchen during ceremonies and not people who would put their energetic garbage into the food that is served to participants. Consequently, at my ceremonies you eat the best foods that Mother Earth can provide, made with love. Miguel has an interesting story about sensing the energetic reality behind food. It is about an indigenous white shaman who is an expert in sensing the energetic reality behind the physical. For some reason or the other this man had quite a few enemies in the black shaman sector. Because it was extremely hard for them to kill him off energetically because of his skills, they choose a different way to do so: poisoning. Applying poisonous plants is a widely used method among those Shuar that have the intention to kill other people. It also seems to be the preferred way of committing suicide, as in the rainforest there are not so many skyscrapers that you can jump from or trains that you can throw yourself in front of. On this occasion the shaman entered a restaurant where he sat down with his party to have a meal. What actually he did not know, and apparently did not pick up energetically either, is that the restaurant belonged to the family of one of his greatest enemies. The family called this enemy, a black shaman, and were given permission to put poison in his food; after which they served it to him. The air was full of delicious aromas, but he sensed there was something else. To him the food smelled fishy despite even though he had not ordered such a dish. He checked the energetic reality behind the meal and immediately asked one of his aides to call the police. They came, took the food away in a plastic bag and quickly had it tested in a laboratory. Their findings were that the food was indeed poisoned and consequently the family was arrested. Sensing food apparently saves lives. Sensing food is something that I also do when I do my shopping, although of course I am just a beginner in these things. I use a technique to separate the good stuff from the bad, and also to check what my system needs. When I walk past the aisles in a supermarket I continuously feel what is necessary for my system and why, and connect the foods that I pass with that need. If there is a match, then I will put it into my shopping trolley, probably because this food contains elements that my body needs and of which it picked up the energy field and thus the essence of it. Usually this match comes with a specific feeling in my body which explains why the match is generated. This ability is, however, still grossly underdeveloped in me, you are probably much better at it than I am. I even put the match into my shopping trolley if it is some of that candy that gives light in the dark

because, again, it probably contains something that my body needs, otherwise my attention would not have been drawn to it. It is important is to have worked on your addictions. If you are severely addicted to chocolate what will happen in the supermarket is that the images of chocolate will continuously pop up in your space, which in itself is correct. The body is right: you indeed need that chocolate, but it is, however, to feed your addiction and not to provide you with nutrients. There is the possibility of misreads which you can use to connect the pain that they produce later with the energy of the food, so that in the future you pick that specific food at another moment or never again. In this way you can program your energy system. The body has developed over millions of years into an intricate system that can detect and remember which foods should not be taken and you can use this system to your benefit. Real food tastes really great. For this reason I am surprised that so many people drench their food in flavour enhancers such as all kinds of sauces or different food enhancing spices. There is even a distant family member of mine who feels that he needs to put ketchup on all of his food, and he is not even American. Do not get me wrong, herbs are a great way to enhance the flavour of a dish when used modestly. The reality is, however, that the flavour enhancers that most people use are full of chemical additives. It is funny that many health fanatics create magnificent salads for themselves that include the most exquisite vegetables, but just before they start munching they top it off with copious amounts of salad dressing that alternatively could have been used as an anti-snails agent. Flavour enhancers limit taste buds. I discovered this after fasting for seventy-six days in a meditation centre in Guatemala. The fast included silence and for the last thirty days only drinking liquids. When I came out of the fast I could taste food like I had never tasted it before. The medicine also has this effect; even after two days into a Natemamu ritual in Ecuador your senses become so clean that you start to really taste the food instead of having to use a flavour enhancer to make it bearable to eat. The only exception to all of the above is of course HP Steak Sauce. I highly recommended that you drench all food in HP Steak Sauce. When I was studying at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing one of the teachers once gave a hilarious talk about food. In the middle of the show he pulled out a paper bag and showed us a hamburger from McDonalds. First he explained what was in the hamburger nutrient wise, virtually nothing, and then he explained that he had bought the burger eight years ago. It looked like it had just been made. The reason for it not decaying is because what you buy at McDonalds does not qualify as food. Wagonloads of people still go to McDonalds every day to fill themselves up. In the hilarious movie Supersize Me they do a similar thing when they compare the decay of a regular burger to the decay of a burger coming from The Mac. This is, of course, the same process of decay as is happening rapidly in your intestines which enables your body to absorb the nutrients from the food. The teacher had owned the burger for eight years but on Facebook photos keep popping up of similar McDonalds burgers that are found in dark places, such as the forgotten insides of coats. Because they do not decay you will not smell them and so you do not start looking for them to throw them out. The oldest burger that I have seen appearing on Facebook so far is fourteen years old. Lets see who can top that: check your pockets! It is far more important to keep an energetic diet than a physical one. One way of keeping such a diet is to be selective with your thinking. Please let me explain why. Anyone who has done just a little bit of meditation can tell you that thoughts are an interesting phenomenon. Meditators will tell you

that once they have sat down to meditate, they can pacify the energies within them, and their thoughts will also become calmer. The reason for this happening is that thought arises from the energies within and have the same qualities as those energies. If you cultivate calmer energies within then in its turn calmer thoughts will arise. The relationship between thought and energy is reciprocal: the quality of your thoughts will steer the quality of the energies within you. By staying aware of what you are thinking you can thus investigate the energies within yourself, and keep yourself from being trapped. Negative energies that are contained in your energy system thus create negative thinking. In their turn, negative thoughts create negative energy, so you can see how so many people keep their selves trapped in an un-ending spiral of negativity that is not benefitting them or anyone else. These negative energies also do not benefit medicine circles because these energies will be multiplied and can lead to massive projections towards the healer or towards others in the circle. Eventually, of course, this negativity will manifest itself on a physical level as disease, so there is all reason to discontinue it. Luckily there is one very simple and effective way to deal with it, just stop it! If you have any thoughts of fear or self-doubt coming up: stop it. If you have thoughts of anger or hate, stop it. If there are dislikes appearing towards your own physical form, stop it. Just stop it. Entertaining all these negative thoughts not only keeps you from happiness, it will also stop you from reaching your true potential beyond the drama. Negative thinking keeps you chained; it is a chain that nobody else but you put on to yourself, but it can easily be taken off: put yourself on a thought diet. Usually, when I explain this simple but effective technique, people they start to come up with all kinds of reasons why they cannot stop the continuation of negative thinking. This is what I tell them stop that too! You may have had a bad childhood, your dog might have just have died or you might have broken your toe nail this morning, but by continuing to entertain the negativity around these events you will not solve anything. By all means, be sad about what has happened to you, but after you have cried it out please get yourself back together and do not turn things into a drama; that is much healthier for you, and for others. Of course, you have the right to keep yourself in your negative thinking spiral, but equally you also have the right to positive thinking; healthy people choose the latter. A sexual diet is also important. Has it ever occurred to you that you cannot have an orgasm when you really want to? That is because sexual energy is one of letting it go, of expansion without itself controlling it. It is exactly for this reason that it is good to have a sexual diet before and after a ceremony. The energies of a ceremony are completely and utterly different than those of sex are. The energies of a ceremony are those of creating a container, of steering, of guiding; and ultimately of being able to compose and master yourself, even if the energies of the medicine are descending down upon you like a heavy summers storm. If you want to prevent hindrance to your own process and that of others then do not take sexual energies into a ceremony. This of course also applies to the master who is guiding the ceremony. One I met had sex a few hours before the start of the ceremony; I could smell that aroma in his energy field. As a result, when the energies of the medicine came in, he had to massively vomit for twenty minutes before his system was clean enough to continue with the ceremony. The people in the circle erroneously thought that he was working on their energetic garbage as they paid him for, while in reality he was vomiting out his own follies. Such silly things can easily be avoided by keeping to the diet.

I cannot be dominated, not even by a diet. For this reason I sin now and then and eat at McDonalds, just to prove that I can, and because of its great taste. Of course, after doing so, within ten minutes, my intestines start rumbling like Vesuvius. Sometimes I switch to space consciousness to observe in the energetic space beyond the physical what happens when the speed train that quickly follows the rumbling leaves the lower backside of my body at high velocity; the wagons of this train all have a large yellow M painted on them. When this happens I always see in my vision this pale red haired clown in a yellow-red outfit piloting that train, laughing right in my face. And then I remember again why I should not eat at McDonalds: if you do not share the clowns values, then do not eat his food because on a deeper level it contains his energy. It is the story of any food.

This article is an excerpt from the book Uwishin, to be published later this year. It is about the authors experiences with the indigenous shamans of the Upper Amazon. The author can be contacted via email at paul@tsunki.com, or the website www.Tsunki.com, where you can also subscribe to a newsletter. The author is open to enquiries and constructive discussions on the use of plant medicines. You are cordially invited to share the link to this article with others.