The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook

The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook provides a practical guide to ayahuasca use, aiding seekers in making right—and safe—decisions about where to go, who to drink with, and what to expect. Ayahuasca, the Amazonian psychoactive plant brew, has become vastly popular. Once the sole purview of shamans and indigenous native people in the great Amazon rainforest, ayahuasca is now becoming well known—and widely used—around the globe. Today, foreigners from all over the world flock in ever-burgeoning numbers to the steamy Amazon, drinking bitter ayahuasca with shamans and curanderos in order to access its potent healing and spirit-enlivening effects. What began as a mere trickle of visitors in the 1980s has become a surging riptide of seekers. Chris Kilham (Fox News's "Medicine Hunter") has worked closely with South American shamans for two decades and has sat in ayahuasca ceremonies with at least 20 different shamans. Through his "Ayahuasca Test Pilots" program, Kilham has brought numerous people to the Amazon to engage in ceremonies with maestro ayahuasceros. Clear, concise, straightforward, and well informed, The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook is an indispensable guide for anyone curious about this unusual plant medicine.

The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook provides a practical guide to ayahuasca use, aiding seekers in making right-and safe-decisions about where to go, who to drink with, and what to expect. Ayahuasca, the Amazonian psychoactive plant brew, has become vastly popular. Once the sole purview of shamans and indigenous native people in the great Amazon rainforest, ayahuasca is now becoming well known-and widely used-around the globe. Today, foreigners from all over the world flock in ever-burgeoning numbers to the steamy Amazon, drinking bitter ayahuasca with shamans and curanderos in order to access its potent healing and spirit-enlivening effects. What began as a mere trickle of visitors in the 1980s has become a surging riptide of seekers. Chris Kilham (Fox News's ''''''''Medicine Hunter'''''''') has worked closely with South American shamans for two decades and has sat in ayahuasca ceremonies with at least 20 different shamans. Through his ''''''''Ayahuasca Test Pilots'''''''' program, Kilham has brought numerous people to the Amazon to engage in ceremonies with maestro ayahuasceros. Clear, concise, straightforward, and well informed, The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook is an indispensable guide for anyone curious about this unusual plant medicine.

The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook provides a practical guide to ayahuasca use, aiding seekers in making right-and safe-decisions about where to go, who to drink with, and what to expect. Ayahuasca, the Amazonian psychoactive plant brew, has become vastly popular. Once the sole purview of shamans and indigenous native people in the great Amazon rainforest, ayahuasca is now becoming well known-and widely used-around the globe. Today, foreigners from all over the world flock in ever-burgeoning numbers to the steamy Amazon, drinking bitter ayahuasca with shamans and curanderos in order to access its potent healing and spirit-enlivening effects. What began as a mere trickle of visitors in the 1980s has become a surging riptide of seekers. Chris Kilham (Fox News's ''''''''Medicine Hunter'''''''') has worked closely with South American shamans for two decades and has sat in ayahuasca ceremonies with at least 20 different shamans. Through his ''''''''Ayahuasca Test Pilots'''''''' program, Kilham has brought numerous people to the Amazon to engage in ceremonies with maestro ayahuasceros. Clear, concise, straightforward, and well informed, The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook is an indispensable guide for anyone curious about this unusual plant medicine.

Used for thousands of years by indigenous tribes of the Amazon rain forest, the mystical brew ayahuasca is now becoming increasingly popular in the West. Psychologist Rachel Harris here shares her own healing experiences and draws on her original research (the largest study of ayahuasca use in North America) into the powerful medicine’s effects on depression, addiction, PTSD, and anxiety. In this wide-ranging and personal exploration, Harris details ayahuasca’s risks and benefits, helping readers clarify their intentions and giving psychotherapists a template for transformative care and healing.

"It was during my eighth or ninth plant medicine journey that I was finally getting a real sense of freedom. I was feeling so elated that I told the moon I had a special request. I explained that this life had been so full of pain for me that I didn't think I could do it all again. So I asked her if in my next life she could make sure that I found the plant medicine as soon as possible. Her reply floored me. She typed, ‘Gerry, that's a request about next time, but it's the same one you used last time.'" Plant medicine? The moon typing? It probably seems incomprehensible. Gerard Armond Powell was a rags-to-riches success story—a member of the 1 percent—but also an extremely unhappy person with multiple addictions. On a fast track to destroying every relationship that ever mattered to him and considering suicide, he was looking for a miracle, a way out. He found it in the form of plant medicine and a shaman who introduced him to the truth of his life, and laid the groundwork for a psycho-spiritual journey that would lead him to reconnect with his soul, heal his addictions, and, finally, achieve a lasting sense of peace and happiness. This experience changed Powell, and convinced him to share the universal truths he learned with as many people as he could, which he does at the acclaimed Rythmia Life Advancement Center in Costa Rica, and now with readers in Sh*t the Moon Said. This mesmerizing story gives readers a blueprint to chart their own course to happiness. The first step is to learn who they really are and the possibilities of what they can still become. Second, they have to achieve a reconnection with their souls. And third, they must heal their hearts. Sh*t the Moon Said provides us with an irreverent way of highlighting our shared unconscious wisdom and its life-changing potential. Powell's candid tale and unlikely journey will help inspire readers to know themselves better, and to find the path to their own greatest redemption.

An insider’s account of the journey to become an ayahuasquero, a shaman who heals with the visionary vine ayahuasca • Details the author’s training and life as a curandero using ayahuasca medicine, San Pedro cactus, tobacco purges, psychedelic mushrooms, and other visionary plants • Offers first-hand accounts of miraculous healing where ayahuasca revealed the cause of the illness, including how the author healed his mother from liver cancer • Shows how “ayahuasca tourism” symbolizes the Western world’s reawakening need to connect with the universal life force For more than 20 years American-born Alan Shoemaker has apprenticed and worked with shamans in Ecuador and Peru, learning the traditional methods of ayahuasca preparation, the ceremonial rituals for its use, and how to commune with the healing spirit of this sacred plant as well as the spirit of the San Pedro cactus and other sacred plant allies. Now a recognized and practicing ayahuasquero, or ayahuasca shaman, in Peru, he offers an insider’s account of the ayahuasca tradition and of its use for expanding consciousness and achieving healing through access to other dimensions of being. Shoemaker details his training and his own curandero practice using ayahuasca medicine, tobacco purges, psychedelic mushrooms, and other visionary plants. He discusses the different traditions of his two foremost teachers and mentors, Don Juan in the Peruvian Amazon, an ayahuasquero, and Valentin in Ecuador, a San Pedro shaman. He reveals the indispensable role played by icaros, the healing songs of the plant shaman, and offers firsthand accounts of miraculous healing resulting from ayahuasca’s ability to reveal the cause of an illness, including how he healed his mother from liver cancer. The author also addresses the rising popularity of Northerners traveling to the Amazon to seek healing and mind expansion through ayahuasca and shows how this fascination is triggered by humanity’s reawakening need to connect to the universal life force.

Finally, after 25 years of incubation, Peter Gorman's book is out. Ayahuasca in My Blood - 25 Years of Medicine Dreaming concerns his longstanding relationship with the Amazonian visionary medicine. Here's what people have said about it: "Unlike many writing about ayahuasca, Peter Gorman knows this plant and these forests long and well. Explorer, ethnobotanist, writer and raconteur - Gorman is uniquely qualified to tell this incredible tale. A wild mixture of adventure, horror, spirituality, tenderness, and insight, Ayahuasca in My Blood is most highly recommended!" -- Mark J. Plotkin, Ph.D, President, Amazon Conservation Team and author of Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice. "Long before ayahuasca tourism became a pastime for rich gringos, Peter Gorman was knocking around Iquitos and the Amazon. He's traveled the rivers and quaffed the brew with the best (and the worst) of them and been way, way beyond the chrysanthemum on many a dark jungle night. This is the intensely personal story of an old-school jungle rat for whom ayahuasca is not just a hobby, but a life-long quest." -- Dennis McKenna, Ph.D, noted ethnopharmacologist, co-author of The Invisible Landscape, co-founder of the Institute of Natural Products Research and founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute. "I have known and traveled with Peter for almost a decade and was present for a number of the events he included in this book as well as many others. Don Julio was the most powerful man I have ever had the privilege of knowing. Further, as a trained scientist I believe the plant medicine truly offers a doorway to a rich world that needs to be understood in our postmodern lives. This is destined to become a must read for anyone who is serious about understanding the world of the shaman." -- Lynn Chilson - CEO Chilson Enterprises, Inc.

The Ayahuasca Reader is an expansive anthology of texts translated from several different languages covering multiple aspects of the ayahuasca experience. The book is a classic in ayahuasca literature and a must read for those interested in learning more about this sacred plant medicine.