Animal Allies and Trauma Healing: What Ayahuasca Can’t Heal Alone
What happens when the most profound healing in your life doesn't come from a therapist, a spiritual teacher, or even ayahuasca — but from an animal?
Did you also have a deep relationship with an animal that felt like so much more than just "an animal"?
This episode dives into the medicine of our animal allies and explores why they are essential guides in trauma healing — beyond what ayahuasca or any psychedelic work can do alone.
I share the story of the animal who became my teacher and friend, showing me the spiritual depth and transformative power of these relationships, and revealing the lessons I could only receive through loyal presence, reflection, and unwavering guidance.
Because here's what I've come to understand after over a hundred ceremonies and a lifetime of healing work: ayahuasca can take you to the root of your pain. She can show you where it lives, when it started, what it cost you. She can crack you open in ways nothing else can. But there are parts of us that were wounded in a very specific way — through the loss of unconditional love — and those parts need something equally specific to come home.
They need a mirror. A pure one. One that never lied to you.
In this episode we explore:
Why losing an animal can hit harder than any human loss — and why that actually makes complete sense
What animals really are on a spiritual level — and why we massively underestimate them
The difference between guilt and shame in trauma healing — and why the body holds both long after the mind has moved on
Why desire and fear are more connected than we think — and how unresolved grief quietly turns your deepest wants into things you run from
What ayahuasca alone cannot heal — and where community becomes the real medicine
PODCAST EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
0:00
There are three questions the shamans will ask you to figure out when your illness entered your life.
They will ask when did you stop singing, when did you stop dancing, and when did you stop looking at this world in awe.
0:16
I remember that moment vividly.
I was moved to a foster family to be safe from alcohol and violence, and I ended up in an isolated goat farm in a foster family where there was immense terror and abuse.
But yet in this place, love had a way to find me, and I had a best friend.
0:39
And without knowing it, at that time, this friend would become my lifelong mentor and anchor my guide into my healing, into my work with ayahuasca and my connection to the part of me that I thought that I had lost.
0:56
Today's episode dives into the power of animal friends and what they truly represent in our healing and spiritual and human journey as a mirror to our true self.
And also what ayahuasca alone cannot heal and where we need to step back into community to integrate who we became on this journey.
1:19
We will explore what is needed to fully integrate your transformation and your reclamation of your true self.
Welcome to the Ayahuasca Integration podcast.
My name is David Fox and I'm on episode 21 and just realized I have actually forgot to properly introduce myself.
1:36
So here I am, David Fox, and today I'm taking you into my most challenging human experience.
And I want to share this with you because in one ceremony, I heard a whisper that said, don't let any of your suffering go to waste.
And I learned that even in the uttermost darkness that we can experience in our human experience, there are spiritual diamonds to be found.
2:02
There are moments of immense grace and expansion that can emerge from our deepest pain.
It does not mean that any harm is OK, but it means that there might be hidden treasures on this journey when we alchemize this darkness into life.
This episode today reference trauma, animal abuse, and abuse of children.
2:23
So please tune out if you're in a sensitive or vulnerable moment today or if you're listening around children.
And the story I will share with you today is also the anchor and the reason why I'm doing the work that I do and why I'm called to share this work with you on this podcast.
2:40
It's about my main teacher, my anchor in my spiritual path, and also my own heart and the inner sanctuary that nobody could ever touch and ever break.
It's a journey into the darkest corner of hell that I got to experience in this lifetime and how I discovered the light I never lost.
3:35
When I was 2 years old, I was sent to a goat farm in a foster care to protect me, they said.
And what I found there, I've spent decades trying to find words for it.
It was a form of absurd darkness with violence that made no sense for a child's mind, and it doesn't make any sense now.
3:56
But I also found light there because in this very scary and difficult and confusing space, isolated from other kids and isolated from other homes, trapped between two mountains.
I had a best friend and I didn't even give him a name.
4:16
I just called him my goat.
He was beautiful, funny, and playful in a way that felt like he was there just for me.
Every single morning I would wake up and he would be standing outside my front door like clockwork before I even got there.
4:34
And if I didn't come out by sunrise, he would literally find a way to open the door himself.
He would put his head inside the door, he would find a way to open up the door with his horn, and sometimes he would walk all the way in just to find me.
And for some people he was just a goat.
4:50
But for me, he was everything.
And at that time, I literally had no one.
I was not allowed to be hugged or cared for in this home.
I was there to be bullied and to be abused.
And on the other side, I had a biological mother who was drinking every day and in a relationship with a very abusive man.
5:13
So wherever I turned when it came to humans, I felt unsafe and I felt I couldn't say anything because if I said something, it would be used against me.
It was just the darkest, darkest, darkest place.
And yeah, even in the darkest corner of hell, I understood that love can find us and that even there, there is a light we have that we can never lose.
5:40
And for me, that mirror to that light was my goat.
And there was nothing that made these foster parents anger than seeing me smile or laugh or sing or play with my coat.
So they would always find new ways of punishing me.
But still, it never really worked.
5:57
My smile always came back after the tears had dried.
Every single time, no matter what they did to me.
Because I always had someone who showed up for me every single morning.
Someone who reflected back to me without words, that I was worth showing up for, that I was loved, that I existed, that I mattered, and that mirror was my goat and he was that surface that I could look into and find myself.
6:25
But then one cold winter morning, I was told to come out into the stairway where he always stood waiting for me.
And he was there this morning as well, but this time he was standing in front of me, and his head was covered in blood.
But he didn't leave.
6:42
He didn't hide, he didn't run, he was just looking at me, still loyal, the same way he stood outside that door every single morning.
My foster mum was standing on the left side of this stairway, smiling and laughing, and my foster father was standing on my right side, close to my goat with an axe in his hand and yelled, now you don't have any best friends.
7:09
And then he lifted the axe and my best friend was gone.
In that moment, my mirror shattered into a million pieces.
My mirror of self, my mirror of belonging, of safety, of joy, of peace.
7:28
And that surface that I had used to find myself every morning was gone.
And in the silence that followed, 2 teachers were born in me that would follow me for decades until I dared to face them.
The first one was guilt, and it was formed as a thorn that pushed deep into my heart so that my heart kept bleeding long after that morning and long into my adulthood.
7:56
Guilt that he was dead.
Guilt that I was alive.
Guilt for breeding, for existing, for not having stopped this, for not saving him.
And the second one was shame.
Burning shame.
A shame that wrapped itself all around me like fire.
8:14
Shame for existing.
Shame for being born wrong.
Shame that I've taken up space in the world.
Shame that I could not save him, could not save my best friend, could not say anything, could not scream, could not stop it.
8:33
Guilt that said what you did was bad and shame that said you are bad.
And I believe both of them.
And thankfully I came into a third family, my soul family, where I grew up from I was 6 until I became an adult.
8:49
This is where I started to pick up the pieces of the mirror that I'd shattered in this very crazy and confusing childhood in their home.
In our home.
I got to feel safe and slowly I started picking up the pieces of who I was.
9:06
I could find happiness and laughter and creativity and song and music, but as an adult, I had to keep going.
I still felt fragmented.
So I had to go to therapy.
And in therapy I would find my Greek and in yoga I found another piece, my anger.
9:26
And I went into the coaching industry thinking that that would have the people that could help me transform.
And I found the leader hiding under a lot of people policing mechanism.
But the mirror still didn't feel intact.
It felt like it was leaking energy, confused and anxious and constantly striving.
9:46
I knew there had to be something more.
And then other professionals in the industry would say, you have such a difficult childhood, just be happy you're alive.
Just be happy you're functioning.
But still I had this question that was deep in my heart.
Can I heal fully and can I live a normal life that is not just OK and anxious less, but full and abundant and alive?
10:12
And with that question open, Ayahuasca started knocking on the door and I understood it was time to find a deeper answer.
So I went into ceremony with my friend Brett and Nick, and for the first time in my life, all of the pieces of me we're there together.
10:30
The anger, the grief, the love, the loss, the goat, the child, all of it was present in one room at once.
And yes, it was chaotic.
The first 12 ceremonies was full of rage and sadness and grief of losing my best friend.
10:47
It all came rushing back.
It was like being inside a roller coaster of fire.
So much anger and hatred, it felt like releasing an ocean of tears that have been stuck inside my body for decades.
Finally feeling and releasing the pain that had been swimming around my subconscious like little angry and sad demons and clowns.
11:10
Charged emotional material that was unfelt, pushed to the back of the psyche and back into the body until there was finally enough space to process it.
And I was a whisper to me.
Give your friend, your best friend, a funeral.
11:28
Put his energy into the ground.
Honour this friendship, this relationship, show your respect.
But I refused, I couldn't bury him and I still didn't understand.
After 30 years, why am I still this sad, this angry over losing an animal friend?
11:48
Friends that even family would say animals die.
You need to get over it.
But I didn't have any answer and I couldn't let it go.
And compared to everything else that I had experienced, being pushed off a Cliff by my foster father, almost murdered, drinking from the toilet, being terrorized, needles, burns, all of this was nothing compared to losing my goat.
12:12
It was always about him.
It was the only thing that peers through every layer of resistance and dissonance that I had and made me feel what it truly meant to be that boy in that body, that goat boy that I once were.
12:29
And ayahuasca kept asking, Look your goat into the eyes.
The moment before he dies, that moment before the axe, just look.
See what's inside his eyes.
And I couldn't, 10 years of ceremonies, over and over, she would ask the same question, but I would not look into those eyes.
12:49
It was too painful.
Then at once ceremony, my goat, my best friend, suddenly came to visit me.
He was standing there next to me in spirit form, filled with light, and I could see him.
13:05
I could feel him like I felt him when I was a child.
And I wept and cried all night, still not understanding.
What is it about his coat?
What is it about this one connection, this one animal, this one relationship that just cuts deeper than everything else?
13:22
Like spiritual sandpaper just takes me to the core of my being.
And in another ceremony, ayahuasca took me somewhere else.
She showed me that my greatest desire as a child was simply to just be with my goat and have my best friend there every morning.
13:41
But when he died and that desire could not be fulfilled, desire turned into pain.
And I learned that within every big fear we have lives a desire that is unfulfilled.
And I started fearing what I desired.
13:58
So any times I got close to what I truly wanted, I wanted to run.
Because getting close to my desire felt like losing him all over again, and therefore also losing myself over 100 ceremonies and 10 years working with this magical plant and my goat kept coming back like an anchor into my own healing, into my own heart, again and again, taking me deeper and deeper, truer and true.
14:26
The fire and the pain and ayahuasca would repeat.
Look into his eyes.
And again and again.
I would refuse.
Because his eyes were the original mirror, that first surface that I had ever trusted.
14:44
And whatever was looking back at me from inside them, I wasn't ready for it.
I couldn't.
And through these ceremonies, would I ask on, my friend would come back, and sometimes he would be my best friend, standing there next to me.
But other times he would show up in a different form, as a teacher, as a guardian, and sometimes in his true spiritual form.
15:06
And in those moments he showed me something that I had never been told for any of my spiritual practices or religions, that the greatest teacher on this planet, they don't always come down and call themselves Jesus or Buddha or mom or brother or friend.
15:24
Some of the greatest spirits that come down to this earth, they call themselves a cat, a dog, a horse, a hamster, a rabbit.
And we diminish them.
We treat them as secondary beings, not knowing that they might be the most powerful ancestors.
15:42
A grandmother we once had were a spirit beyond our comprehension, so wise, who understood that the most powerful and profound way to reach to our hearts in this lifetime was to arise without a language, without power, without judgement, without agenda.
16:00
To be our animal, To be our purest mirror, our friend.
To simply reflect back who we truly are without distortion, without condition.
To just love us unconditionally when no human around us knew how.
And for me, this was just baffling.
16:18
To understand that some of the most powerful and wise and ancient spirits on this planet are not reincarnated as the smartest and most expressive and powerful humans, but rather the opposite.
That the most powerful spirits on Earth might be doing their deepest work right now as a hamster or a dog or a snake or a goat or a sheep or a cat.
16:43
And it truly makes me proud to know that that when I look at my dog, I know that there is a powerful spirit, a real teacher who chose to enter my life in this way because they know that this is where they can reach us, not just through a religious book or through a concept of spiritual practice, but through being our puppy or being the neighbour's cat, and for me, being a goat.
17:11
And anyone on this path knows that that our animals are not only unlicensed therapist and unpaid caretakers, but they're filling a gap that a lot of parents and friends and entire societies cannot fill because they can love without condition.
17:28
And I honestly wonder how many lives they are saving every single day because they are there for us.
My goat took many faces and many shapes over those 10 years.
He was my guardian.
He show me what the loyalty looks like.
17:44
He was a great teacher and he was a powerful spirit that always guided me into deeper and truer part of myself.
And he is still my guide and my teacher.
So after 10 years in this journey, I also decided to look into his eyes when Ayahuasca asked me to come and stay with him in that last moment.
18:04
And it was unbelievably painful because not only was he my favorite soul in this entire world, like a soul mate and a connection that just sparkled that I have no words for.
As if you had your purest, most powerful energy as your best friend and every moment was just pure bliss, pure happiness, pure love.
18:22
And his eyes was the safest, happiest eyes I've ever known.
I almost felt like God was my best friend and I got to play with God in childhood, but that suddenly they turn into the saddest eyes that almost asked me why?
Why is this happening?
18:37
Why are you hurting me?
And I think what broke me the most was his loyalty.
When you hit an animal with an axe, they run, they hide.
But he stood there in front of me, looking into my eyes, not moving a centimetre until he could no longer stand because he was so loyal and he would never leave me.
18:59
And I, at that age, could not scream.
I could not shout.
I was frozen and I was drowning in guilt for not saving him.
And in the ceremony, when I finally looked into his eyes, I understood why I'd gotten all these infections that I had in my throat and other places in my body.
19:17
It was all the tears and the screams that I could not release from that day.
And I started to release them and the infection just melted away and I was outside by myself, releasing all the sadness and anger and rage into the earth, asking the earth and my ancestors, please forgive me.
19:34
I know part of this is my karma and I want so dearly to just release it, to accept it.
Please let me release it back to the earth.
Pachamama, please let me give this back to you.
And as it released, I felt all this life force so strong and almost knocked me over.
19:52
And I understood.
My real fear was now not dying, was not being abused or losing anyone.
My real fear was feeling all of these desires again.
The truest, deepest, rawest desires.
Sensual, creative desires, intimate my most alive desires.
20:12
And I laughed so deeply when I saw it.
Because.
I thought for so long I was scared of dying, but I was actually just scared of fully living in my loudest, wildest, truest self to really live within my own desires.
20:29
And that's when I understood that this spiritual journey is simply two parts.
One, we go into this healing journey to release all our blockages so we can receive ourselves.
And then we go into this journey of blossoming as a flower of our consciousness, blossoming into our fullest expression.
20:49
And that's when I felt that a decade long chapter of my healing work with ayahuasca was complete.
I'd gone this tiny little circle, tiny little spiral.
I've gone through my process one time.
It took me 10 years and I felt ready to guide others through this deep work.
21:09
And I'm so grateful that I've had a goat and dogs and horses and so many animals and so much nature to guide me on my journey.
I once said, someone here and said just asked me on the beach, why do you think you made it?
Like, why do you think you're not with a horrible addiction or a very difficult personality disorder?
21:29
Like why do you think you're functioning so well?
And I said, my relationship to nature, I spent so much time out to nature by myself and with my goat and on the mountains with my dog.
It has its own medicine, it has its own power.
And, and I'm just so grateful that I get to cultivate that relationship with Mother Earth every single day and with all the spirits of this land.
21:51
And for so many of us, our animals are the only mirror we trusted when we grew up, the only surface we could look into and still find ourself and something we trusted that would calm our nervous system and make us feel safe.
And I always wondered, why is that?
Well, a part of it, I think, is because when you look into your animals eyes, your best friend's eyes, they don't see your shame, they don't see your failures, your past.
22:17
They just see you.
They just see your being.
They just feel you.
They see the innocent one, the pure one.
They see our sacredness.
And I think for many of us, we hide our sacredness and our innocence inside of them.
We give them a part of us that is too fragile, too sensitive to be shown in this world, too valuable to us, or too scared to be seen.
22:43
The part is so pure and so open and so full of aliveness and joy.
So we just tuck it away inside our relationship with our animal friends because it is a place where it feels safe.
And maybe it's the only place where we're not asked to perform or to justify or to protect ourself.
23:03
And our animal friends, they carry this for us, our sacredness, faithfully and unconditionally without everyone's asking us to be any different.
And that is what our animal friends, I feel, reflect back to us, not who we became or who we think we are or what has been done to us, but they get to reflect that pure mirror, that pure sacredness that we had.
23:30
They get to reflect that pure mirror, that pure potential that is still intact, still whole and still there.
So when we lose them, we don't just lose an animal friend.
We lose maybe the only mirror that was showing us that part of ourselves, our mirror to that safety and that sacredness and that spiritual relationship.
23:51
And sometimes we don't even know where to find it again.
We don't even know what we have lost.
And people will say, well, it was an old dog, it was an old cat, and it happens.
But we know that this has been a relationship that is unreplaceable.
Some of us are looking forward to get to the other side so we can meet them again.
24:09
But here's what I had to learn that after 10 years of ceremony and a lifetime of healing, we are hurt so deeply in relationships, many of us.
And yet we are expected to heal alone in therapy rooms or in chachi.
24:25
BT talks about our pain or alone in our math, in ceremony, in yoga studios.
We're alone with our process, alone with our pain, and there is deep value in that.
Real value.
There is the part of the process where you have to face it and meet it and accept it and release it so that you can receive yourself.
24:43
I had to go through that process as well, but it's not enough.
We release and we reclaim and we receive who we really are, but then we have to return into our life in these relationships that we have as who we became.
24:59
And that return is where integration is key because the wounds that we all experience, they all happen in relationships.
So the real, the peeling and the return and integration also has to happen in relationship under the eyes of other people, to be witnessed and to be reflected back as sacred by another human being.
25:22
The challenge is many of us, we don't trust human mirrors.
We were burned by them, we were dropped by them and shattered by them.
So why would we hand someone a human mirror and say, trust this?
So you have to build it slowly with the same conditions as our animal friends gave us, unconditional on judging without an agenda.
25:43
And that is what this transformational integration really means for me.
Not just processing what's happening inside a ceremony, but bringing it back out into the circle, into the relationship, into the mirror, into the community so it can take form and letting other humans slowly become safe enough to hold that space.
26:03
And this is how my work has been born.
And it's why I feel I've been born to do this work, and this work has given birth to me.
And for me, that work is about facilitating these mirrors and these safe spaces for the medicine to do its magic.
And I love it when that happens in the human circle.
26:21
The first time I walked into the integration circle 10 years ago, I knew that this is where I want to stay for the rest of my life.
It was so immensely powerful of seeing the consciousness and the technology that awakens when the circle comes together.
26:36
As if everyone was different organs in one healing body.
As if consciousness, when it connected everyone together, it knew how to move and pull and stir the emotions and the energy and just transform.
As long as there was a safe space, as long as there was a great facilitator anchoring the energy, consciousness could do its magic by itself, just utilizing the medicine that everyone came into the circle with.
27:02
I was amazed that I still am in awe over the potential of this circle.
I trained integration facilitators in this work and I guide them on a journey to see through many different mirrors so that they can see aspects of themselves that most people cannot see on their own.
27:20
Their sacredness, their power, their love, their desire, their sacred shadow, the untouched part, their innocence, their pure potential.
And to also show them that a circle can be saved, that their mirror perception can be cleaned again, that they no longer have to look true, a distorted lens of South.
27:45
And also to show them that a circle can see them really, really clearly, even though they think they can't.
A lot of people can read you so quickly and see so much of your power and so much of the things that you think nobody else can see.
28:00
And it's so beautiful to see how much transforms when things are just witnessed in a safe space.
And slowly and carefully everyone can sort of regain the trust in themselves and see the truth about themself.
I did this also yesterday with a client.
It's one of the rituals I do when someone completes a six month journey with me either in my groups or in one-on-one work.
28:22
And he had to call in 20 of his closest friends.
Just imagine you have to have your parents in a Zoom circle online with maybe your boyfriend's parents and your colleagues from different aspects of your life from when you were 20 or 30.
Maybe you have some friends from high school or from when you were a child.
28:41
And suddenly there are 20 people from all these different facets of your life sitting in one room looking at you and then sharing and mirroring back to you.
What they see as your light, what they see as your power, what they appreciate about you, what they celebrate about you.
And they're doing a celebration of your light and of your life while you are alive.
29:02
When someone enters the celebration circle, they're a mirror of self that once for shattered or had shame or guilt in it suddenly gets cleaned really quickly back to its original state.
And we can let go of that distorted reflection that we've been carrying and trying to fix.
29:20
We can see the true one that is there and has always been there.
And we can stop living from who we think we need to be and start living from who we already are.
When you are in a circle like that, you see that people are already seeing who you are.
They're already celebrating you.
29:36
You're already enough.
And you don't have to be anything else.
And yesterday, I got to see a dad crying celebrating his son.
I got to see a mom with a testimony of love.
I got to see partners and partners, parents and friends from all different aspects of someone's life, showering someone in love.
29:57
And every time I witness this, I get back something I lost as a child.
Hope and faith in humanity.
I get to see how deep love really goes and how deep it touches every single person that walks through and down the street.
30:13
And after doing this and celebrating over 1000 people, I know that this form of work, it's not a reward.
Celebrating ourself and our life is not a reward.
It is the rehearsal when you learn to celebrate yourself, every part of you, and the people that you have in your life, your relationship.
30:33
You are rehearsing a life lived outside of shame.
You're rehearsing wordiness as a daily practice.
You're rehearsing to receive who you are right now and to live from who you are right now, not as a distant destination.
And like many of us, you know, I'm very good at seeing my own shortcomings, my errors, my failures, the cracks, but seeing my own light and my own medicine, that is the mirror, I cannot always hold up for myself.
30:58
It has to be experienced in community with other people.
And that is why I love belonging to a circle.
So when you do this work, you start to see how much love there is in this world, how much beauty, so much unseen, unexpressed, uncelebrated light walking around in human bodies, hiding, sometimes waiting and shrinking because no one ever created a space or a clean mirror for it to be expressed.
31:24
And say, I see you.
I see all the sacredness in you.
And most of us, and also, most leaders in this industry struggle not because of the lack of gifts they have or medicine or insight or power.
They struggle because they have learned to see themselves through distorted mirrors, through shame, through guilt, through a voice that became limited and small.
31:49
So much of this work, it always comes back to trusting yourself and knowing the truth about who you are.
Because when you have trust and when you have truth, you always will have transformation.
And when you can trust your own perception, you can trust your own voice.
32:05
And when you can trust your own voice, you can trust your own medicine.
And you can have a beautiful, natural, authentic energy that impacts others that can really land outside of you and also land in your own heart because your gifts, they are always there.
32:21
They're like colors that you might not notice because they've always been around you.
And it's the way you listen, how you see patterns, how you hold space, how you shift energy without even knowing it.
When you walk into the room, you might dismiss it because it's just how you are.
32:36
And This is why we need mirrors.
Not once and not in the weekend workshop, and not just one single retreat, but over time with people who reflect back over and over and over again what you cannot see in yourself.
Because when it's reflected back consistently, layer by layer, you start to trust your perception.
32:54
You start seeing the truth of your own gifts.
You start seeing and owning your power, and you start seeing and owning your light.
That is what this work does.
It is the mirror you didn't have as a child.
And it is not about fixing anything that is broken.
It is about seeing what is already there and has always been there and then letting it live in you fully.
33:16
This is why every culture in history that knew how to heal and shamanism in a spiritual culture always healed in a circle, healed in songs, healed in ceremony.
We are the first generation that are trying to heal alone, privately, on our phones, in front of an algorithm designed to reflect back our fragment itself and feeding our ego and amplifying our own distortion and making our world smaller and smaller.
33:43
And that's the opposite happens in a circle.
Real human connection in a circle is like a technology we've spent thousands of years cultivating around the fireplace.
And for facilitators in this work, it is essential to truly see your own mirror first so that you don't project onto others and create an unsafe space for their healing.
34:03
Many of us on the healing journey, we might feel like we have this dirty kitchen where we always have to come and clean a sink full of karmic junk.
Endless work, endless processes, but when we cleaned the window of self itself so that the light can come fully in, we're bringing it into completion.
34:23
The mirror was never destroyed, it was just waiting to be cleaned.
So if you feel the call to go deeper into your own healing and learn to hold space for others, I want to tell you shortly about the Sacred Integration Facilitator training that is starting May 20th.
34:40
Twice a year I run the six month facilitation training for those that feel ready to step into this work.
This is where you have been on your own healing journey over time and now you're feeling this whole to maybe become a guide coach, a facilitator in this growing world of planned medicine transmission integration.
35:00
And the most important thing that this training can give you is not a curriculum, it's not a certificate.
It's a direct experience of your own medicine, of your own sacred mirror, the thing you actually came into this world with, the thing that was always there underneath whatever experience you had, that no training and no certificate can install.
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Most facilitators and integration coaches, they never get to truly see it and feel it.
They learn tools and techniques and they hold space for others, but they never fully see the impact of their own presence, their own light, what actually happens in the room because of who they are naturally and authentically in the circle.
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You get to feel that, and you get to see it through the eyes of others.
Over six months, you learn to see yourself through 12 different mirrors, 12 aspects of yourself that most people never see clearly, and you also learn to hold 12 different spaces from individuals to groups.
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You learn the integration and transformational principles that create safety, and you learn tools and how to utilize your medicine with these tools so they become instruments of healing and transmission.
You learn how to help people integrate and prepare them before and after ceremony.
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And underneath it all, how you can integrate yourself and see yourself through the group lens, through a clean window, and finally see your own reflection without any distortion.
At the end of these six months, you will also do a celebration circle for your own, your colleagues, your friends, your family, everyone where your inner child feels safe will be invited into the circle, mirroring back your power, your impact, and your gifts, so that you can fully receive yourself while you're still here, while you are alive, so that you can also express yourself fully.
36:49
This is the foundation of facilitation.
It gives you all the practices and the clarity of your own mirror and the medicine that only you can bring.
And it would be an honor to be with you on this path.
I'm bowing for you my friend, your courage to go into this work with our teacher Ayahuasca and for all the animals that have supported you on your journey and still are.
37:12
See you next week, my friend.
