From my first ceremony onward, I experienced ayahuasca as a deeply relational medicine. Over many more ceremonies, I noticed a growing sense of connection to other people, to our plant and animal friends, and to The Great Mystery. I’ve also experienced becoming more connected to what I think of as my Core Self. I suspect that these kinds of relational outcomes are where the most powerful healing lies with plant medicines. And this may be especially true for those of us living in the most de-natured and individualistic societies.
This post started out as a snippet in my Gentle Path newsletter describing a 2026 brain research study on ayahuasca’s mechanisms of action and social cognition. As I sent it out, I realized I wanted to write more about the topic of ayahuasca and relationality!
Ayahuasca as a relational space
Based on more than a decade of research in international ayahuasca networks and with Indigenous ayahuasca practitioners in the Peruvian Amazon, anthropologist Silvia Mesturini Cappo came to describe ayahuasca itself in relational terms:
Ayahuasca as a relational space is made, at the same time, of the plants, the brew, the ayahuasqueros, all the ritual participants, and all their relations. Ultimately, at the very core, ayahuasca appears, rather than as a singular intentional entity, as a complex entanglement of relations and of ways of relating and of staying related: a space of relational experiment and innovation based on the possibility of communication between people, plants, animals, and spirits (2018, p. 173).
Given this complex relational arena, special care is required to harvest, prepare, and cook the plants used in the ayahuasca brew. Who does the cooking and to whom the medicine is offered are also considered important. This care can be thought of as a “relational art” that has emerged from ancestral knowledges and practices as well as from the personal experience of each onanya1 according to their plant dietas.
In Indigenous Amazonian Shipibo cosmology there is a further dimension to relationality. This involves the concepts of Ibo and Yoshin, sometimes translated as “owners” or “mothers” who are protectors and guardians. The ayahuasca vine and the brewed medicine each have a mother, as do all plants, animals, forest areas, and rivers. Shipibo onanya José López Sánchez states:
To have a good relationship with the plants and their mothers, it is necessary to learn how to show respect and how to behave without betraying the trust the plants place in their human allies (López Sánchez et al., 2024, p. 51).2
These perspectives present an alternative to viewing ayahuasca as simply a psychedelic plant decoction. Instead, they invite us to consider ayahuasca as a vast relational plurality.
Deepening and enlarging circles of connection
Some in the plant medicine community have suggested that foregrounding the relational component of human wellbeing in ayahuasca healing culture should be the priority. The concern is that a sole focus on individual trauma and healing may foster self-absorption that isn’t conducive to wellbeing3. But I believe that making space for both individual and relational intentions in ayahuasca settings can be helpful, and that these are possibly synergistic.
Remembering ourselves
For those of us raised and living in hyper-individualistic societies, moving into more relationality (intrapersonal, interpersonal, interspecies, etc.) via ayahuasca might not come easily, even if this is consciously or unconsciously deeply longed for. As we engage with ayahuasca, there may be phases or cycles of necessary self-absorption (or as I prefer to think of it, deep self-reflection, self-exploration, self-curiosity, even self-interrogation) as we begin to explore ourselves deeply. Ideally occurring within safe and nurturing contexts, this exploration can involve the softening of our psychological guardians/self-protections. As these relax, we may begin to integrate exiled aspects of ourselves and encounter whatever else lies deep within our bodies and minds that’s longing for resolution and release. Perhaps relational connection is both an accelerant and a natural byproduct of a healthy whole-ing process.
Ceremony as developmental container
Borrowing from AEDP Institute faculty member Kari Gleiser, I think of ayahuasca ceremonies as offering a container for a developmental process that can simultaneously deepen and enlarge our circles of connection. The circles deepen as we come to remember and reconnect with ourselves. They enlarge by moving us out from constriction and isolation into ever-expanding external connection. Research by Gül Dölen suggests that psychedelics like ayahuasca could perhaps support this developmental process. Specifically, psychedelics appear to reopen a social reward learning critical period (a window of enhanced relational plasticity typically available in childhood). This reopened window may facilitate deepened and enlarged connections that unfold for each person in different forms, trajectories, and degrees.
Connecting with ayahuasca
When attending ayahuasca ceremonies, many people discover a relational connection with ayahuasca itself. After my very first ceremony (an excruciating experience), a seasoned ceremony helper me craft my intentions for the second night. These were: “Please be gentle with me. Show me who you are. Show me your healing qualities.” In this second ceremony, I experienced meeting ayahuasca, who reassured me that her power was benevolent. (There’s a whole other post to write about ayahuasca “speaking” to us and what that can mean, as well as about the genders and motivations attributed to plants or plant spirits, but for now I simply present this as my subjective experience.) I wrote in my journal the following morning:
As the medicine opens, I am overwhelmed by her power. A vast canyon of irregular gold and black lies before me. I experience ayahuasca appearing above this as unfathomable deep green space-geometry.
She lets me know she understands it’s hard to be in her presence. “It can be nauseating to be in contact with an interdimensional being,” she says, and that this is the lightest touch she has, and she’s here to love me and help me heal. We merge incrementally...
This experience of ayahuasca as benevolent initiated a relationship of increasing trust between us. It also kindled a new and revelatory stance of benevolence towards myself. Additional positive outcomes included a reorganized bodily felt-sense, and lifestyle changes favouring increased health behaviours. Together, these provided the foundation and resourcing for subsequent, ever-deeper ceremony dives to the underbelly of my family’s intergenerational trauma.
In contrast to my experience of ayahuasca’s benevolent intent, onanya José López Sánchez notes that, from his perspective, ayahuasca doesn’t have an intention, but:
If we, with discipline, respect, and humility, go and stand in front, ‘Help me,’ it will help us. But it won’t help you like a doctor in a hospital; instead, you yourself have to offer it your respect, your diet, your fasting, and your discipline. It’s the only gift it wants. Respect (López Sánchez et al., 2024, p. 96).
Ayahuasca as True Other
José further describes ayahuasca as “a being that takes you to its world and makes you see yourself, in your world, from its world” (p. 55). This description fits my lived experience of ayahuasca. And in this meaningful process of being seen and seeing myself through the eyes of ayahuasca, I’ve come to experience ayahuasca as a True Other.
The True Other in AEDP
Diana Fosha, developer of the psychotherapy model Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), describes the True Other as follows:
[The True Other] is the relational counterpart of [Winnicott’s (1960) concept of] the True Self.… [It is] a deep way of feeling known and understood, seen or helped, which is meaningful, attuned, appreciative, and enlivening (Fosha, 2000, p. 169-170).
[It] is an external presence who facilitates our being who we believe ourselves to be, who we are meant to be, someone who is instrumental in helping to actualize a sense of True Self.… The True Other is the midwife of the True Self (Fosha, 2005, p. 531-532).
In short, the True Other helps an individual access and experientially connect with their True Self via in-the-moment, attuned relational connection.
Being seen through ayahuasca’s eyes
True Others can be found anywhere we are lucky enough to encounter them: in our families, friend groups, communities, and care networks. To include plants might seem like a stretch, but I personally make room for ayahuasca (as well as the plants I’ve dieted) in this category. In my second ceremony, I felt deeply and meaningfully known by ayahuasca. In that encounter, I experienced my body being surgically restored to a Truer state, one that was becoming unburdened by a particular ancestral trauma that would continue to be worked on over multiple ceremonies.
A dynamic relationship
Diana has pointed out that the True Other is neither unchanging nor perfect, but “experience[d] in the lived moment” and “has to do with responsiveness to need” (Fosha, 2005, p. 531). This has helped me to not idealize ayahuasca as a static and always perfectly benevolent True Other. In fact, in other ceremonies, I’ve experienced ayahuasca as a riddler, agitator, and obnoxious pest, which evoked feelings of anger, distrust, and even hatred at times. All grist for the mill. With a few dispassionate exceptions, I’ve experienced ayahuasca receiving all my feelings with compassion. All this to say: my relationship with this entity (what else to call her?) has been a dynamic one. And within it, I’ve been coming home to a stable sense of True Self.
Merging with ayahuasca
Despite my experiences of an ayahuasca that is Other, I’ve often experienced merging with ayahuasca in ceremony. As Western ayahuasca practitioner Dave has suggested, ayahuasca and one’s Higher Self are an overlapping Venn diagram. So, during a ceremony, ayahuasca can become both she-AND-me, True-Self-AND-True-Other together. This is one of the many enigmas I’ve grappled with regarding ayahuasca.
Research on ayahuasca and relationality
Another angle on ayahuasca and relationality is being explored through the lens of neuroscience. Prior research had linked drinking ayahuasca with prosocial and relational effects, including increased empathy and lasting changes in social connectedness. A 2026 placebo-controlled fMRI study attempted to discern a possible mechanism by exploring ayahuasca’s effects on social cognition.
Ayahuasca enhances brain connectivity involving social connection
In brain science, bottom-up processing describes perception driven by sensory input, whereas top-down processing reflects the influence of prior knowledge, expectations, and internal models on that perception. The researchers in the fMRI study found that ayahuasca (particularly at higher doses) enhanced connectivity between bottom-up sensory processing systems and higher-order social cognition circuits. Connections were strengthened between action-planning regions and areas involved in perceiving and interpreting others.
These findings suggest that psychedelics may not solely relax top-down control in the brain (as proposed by the influential REBUS model). They may additionally selectively enhance coordination within higher order social cognition networks.
Relevance for psychedelic support
The findings may be particularly relevant for those of us working in psychedelic support because ayahuasca ceremonies and guided psychedelic experiences unfold in relational spaces. Together with Gül Dölen’s findings (that psychedelics re-open a social reward learning critical period), this study seems to affirm that there is a precious opportunity available when psychedelics are used in healing contexts. Within that relational field, people may be able to update their internal working models (e.g., ideas about self, others, and relationships; how we process emotions, etc.) in ways that exceed what is typically accessible in ordinary consciousness.
Enlarging and deepening the circle of prosociality
The fMRI study focused on human-to-human social cognition, describing ayahuasca’s therapeutic effects as “prosocial” (which usually refers to connection and cooperation between humans). But if we consider the Indigenous and experiential accounts I shared above, we might ask whether these same circuits are also implicated in our capacity to relate across (and perhaps beyond) species boundaries: to plants, animals, and the world more broadly. In the cultures from which it originates, ayahuasca has long been understood as a bridge between worlds (including the spirit world). These cosmologies draw a really big circle around who and what we are in relationship with. Studies on ecology-related ayahuasca experiences and meanings (e.g., Aday et al., 2025; Brabec de Mori, 2021; Longo et al., 2023; Ruffell et al., 2024) suggest that ayahuasca may indeed extend prosocial impulses to include the plants, animals, and spirits that are part of this medicine’s relational territory.
And as I came close to posting this piece, it occurred to me that maybe the prosociality stimulated by ayahuasca also manifests intrapersonally in the deepening of positive connection to and treatment of oneself. I’m reminded of the new benevolence I felt towards myself after my second ceremony, which has become an enduring stance in the years since.
Ayahuasca, right relations, and reciprocity
Finally, the topic of ayahuasca and relationality seems incomplete without including the concepts of right relations and reciprocity.
Right relations as an ethical principle
A full exploration of right relations and reciprocity is well beyond the scope of this post. But, generally speaking, right relations (aka right relationship) is an ethical paradigm or principle describing how humans interact with others, including people, plants, animals, cultures, and ecosystems. Engaging in reciprocity is one way of putting that principle into practice. Shipibo onanya Soi has stated:
[T]o be healthy, one must know how to live in harmony and reciprocity with other people and with our environment as a whole (Aronovich & Labate, p. 227).
And Robin Wall Kimmerer, author, professor of environmental and forest biology, and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, has written:
We are all bound by a covenant of reciprocity: plant breath for animal breath, winter and summer, predator and prey, grass and fire, night and day, living and dying. Water knows this, clouds know this. Soil and rocks know they are dancing in a continuous giveaway of making, unmaking, and making again the earth (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 383).
Right relations in practice
In the context of ancestral medicines such as ayahuasca, striving to be in right relation can guide how ceremony attendees relate to the Indigenous teachers and stewards of these plants. For example, the chief of the Yepa Mahsã people, Doethiro Tukano, has expressed that right relations can be based not only on financial contributions (which matter greatly) but on sincere engagement. This can include cultivating a genuine interest in listening to what Indigenous peoples have to say, learning about their cultures, and participating in their political causes. Learning about the ecological contexts from which the plants come, and about the plants themselves, is also encouraged. Cristine Takuá, educator, activist, and artisan of the Maxakali people, notes that it’s been a long road to the collective sharing of these plants, and that that road comes with responsibilities that ceremony participants are called to recognize and honour.
Personal commitments to reciprocity
In my own attempts to engage in right relations and reciprocity, I’ve attended courses through the Chacruna Institute and elsewhere to learn some basics of the Shipibo language, to educate myself about ayahuasca practices and cultural contexts, and to better understand the political, economic, and cultural impacts of the global spread of ayahuasca. In the past, I’ve donated a percentage of my ayahuasca-related income (webinars, etc.) to the Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative of the Americas (IRI), “a grassroots network of Indigenous community organizations fighting for land, water, food, medicine and culture.”
I share this information not to virtue signal, but to provide some concrete examples of the opportunities available. I’ve benefited enormously from Indigenous communities’ knowledge and practices — in fact these have changed my life and resulted in a complete career pivot. So in the spirit of deep gratitude and modelling reciprocity in its monetary form, I’m publicly recommitting to sending 10% of my ayahuasca preparation and integration support income to the IRI.
Summary
I think of ayahuasca as being much more than a psychedelic substance that produces experiences. It’s a relational medicine that has the capacity to deepen our connection to ourselves, to one another, to the nonhuman world, and perhaps to dimensions of reality that Western frameworks are less likely to acknowledge. While neuroscience is offering insights into how ayahuasca facilitates positive relationality, the Indigenous peoples who have stewarded ayahuasca for generations have long known that the relational field extends far beyond any one individual’s ceremony or healing journey, into obligations of right relation and reciprocity. Whatever initially drew you to read this post, I hope it’s offered something useful for considering what relationality can mean in ayahuasca contexts.
Sources
Aday, J. S., Bloesch, E. K., Davis, A. K., Domoff, S. E., Scherr, K., Woolley, J. D., & Davoli, C. C. (2025). Effects of ayahuasca on gratitude and relationships with nature: a prospective, naturalistic study. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 57(2), 171-180. https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2024.2312980
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Aronovich, A. A., & Labate, B. C. (2021). Healing at the intersections between tradition and innovation: An interview with Shipibo Onaya Jorge Ochavano Vasquez. In B. C. Labate & C. Cavnar (Eds.), pp. 227–242. Ayahuasca Healing and Science. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55688-4_13
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- Onanya (which I’ve also seen spelled onaya), is the Shipibo-Conibo word commonly translated as “healer” (“one who knows”: a healer who works with oni, the Shipibo word for ayahuasca). ↩︎
- All Spanish-to-English translations in this blog were completed using Google Translate; therefore, while care has been taken in their review, I cannot guarantee their complete precision. ↩︎
- As an example, anthropologist Adam Andros Aronovich talks about this in conversation with host Eamon Armstrong, in Life is a Festival podcast #133 “Healing from Healing,” 2022 ↩︎