The Medicine
The Medicine That Opened the Door
More than fifteen years with the vine.
“I didn't go looking for shamanism. The medicine led me there.”
This is a personal story about Shaman Yawna's relationship with ayahuasca — what she experienced, what it revealed, what it did not solve, and how that relationship eventually led her deeper into shamanic study, ceremony, sound, breath, ancestral practice, and a life of continued learning.
This page reflects personal experience and spiritual interpretation. It is not medical advice or an invitation to use psychedelic substances.
The First Time
Everyone told me what ayahuasca was going to show me.
She did the complete opposite.
My mind shut down.
No racing thoughts. No answers. No elaborate world opening before me.
Stillness.
Darkness.
I rocked.
My stomach turned, and I rocked through the night.
It was a two-day ceremony, and by the next day, I could feel what I came to know as Mother Aya moving through me. Then came the purging.
I purged and purged until there was a moment when I genuinely thought I was going to die.
But what I experienced wasn't simply being sick. In that moment, the purge represented everything I had been carrying — the darkness, the sickness, the pain, the things happening in my life and the parts of myself I had not yet learned how to face.
I felt as though I was emptying myself.
I thought I was going to die.
Shaman Yawna did not physically die. During the intensity of the purge, she feared that she might. Her later language of death and rebirth describes her personal understanding of identities, stories, attachments, and versions of herself ending — not literal physical death.
This is her emotional and spiritual interpretation of the experience. It is not a claim that purging detoxified the body or removed disease.
And Then Came Morning
And when I came through it, something was different.
I felt lighter.
Awake.
Enlightened in a way I didn't yet have language for.
My world changed after those two days.
The medicine didn't let me escape myself. It taught me how to see myself.
That first ceremony was more than fifteen years ago.
I didn't know then where this relationship would take me. I didn't know I would continue sitting with ayahuasca, eventually host ceremonies, enter deeper study, and encounter other ceremonial and psychedelic traditions and substances.
What I discovered wasn't an escape from myself.
The parts of myself I didn't want to see.
A Relationship Over Time
Fifteen Years of Returning
Over more than fifteen years, my relationship with ayahuasca has changed because I have changed.
Some ceremonies brought beauty.
Some brought fear.
Some brought grief.
Some brought silence.
Some showed me patterns I wanted to defend.
Some confronted me with parts of myself I had spent years avoiding.
I have also encountered other psychedelic and ceremonial substances, including bufo, psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, San Pedro and DMT. I do not consider them interchangeable. Each carries its own history, context, risks, traditions and meaning.
This page is about ayahuasca because that is the relationship that opened the door for me.
- First Ceremony
- Returning
- Hosting Ceremonies
- Deeper Study
- Shamanic Training
- Still Becoming
Educational Context
The Vine
Ayahuasca is a psychoactive preparation associated with Indigenous and traditional practices in parts of the Amazon basin. Preparations vary by tradition and may combine the Banisteriopsis caapi vine with other plants.
The vine contains beta-carboline compounds that can affect monoamine oxidase, and some traditional preparations combine it with a plant containing DMT.
Science can describe molecules and mechanisms. My relationship with the medicine also contains spiritual meaning — and I hold those as different kinds of understanding.
Psychedelic experiences are not without risk.
Experiences can be psychologically and physically intense. Some medications and medical or psychiatric conditions may increase risk. Legal status varies by substance and jurisdiction. People considering psychedelic use should seek qualified medical and legal guidance relevant to their circumstances.
Educational Context
DMT — The Molecule
DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) is a powerful psychedelic compound found in certain plants and also occurring naturally in trace amounts in mammals. Psychedelic experiences can include profound changes in perception, emotion, sense of self, and time.
My own experiences have sometimes felt like access to another world. I understand that as part of my lived and spiritual experience — not something I need science to certify for me.
— Shaman Yawna's personal interpretation
Lessons, Not Conclusions
What the Medicine Taught Me
- Surrender
- I could not control every part of the experience.
- Truth
- The parts of myself I avoided did not disappear because I refused to look at them.
- Death & Rebirth
- I learned that something can end without the body dying — an identity, a belief, a story, a version of myself.
- Humility
- A powerful experience does not make someone enlightened.
- Listening
- Silence became information.
- Integration
- The ceremony was never the whole work.
- Respect for What I Do Not Know
- The deeper I have gone, the less interested I have become in pretending I have all the answers.
The Work Afterward
Ceremony Was Never the End
A ceremony can feel enormous.
But eventually you wake up the next morning.
You still have relationships.
Patterns.
Responsibilities.
Choices.
A body.
A life.
For me, the real question became:
What do I do with what I saw?
Integration meant learning to bring insight into the ordinary parts of my life — how I communicate, how I take responsibility, how I listen, how I repair, how I lead, how I love, and how willing I am to keep seeing myself.
The medicine could show me something. Living it was still my responsibility.
The Path Unfolded
How the Medicine Led Me to Shamanism
I did not leave my first ceremony calling myself a shaman. The path unfolded over years.
Ayahuasca opened questions. Those questions led me toward ceremony. Ceremony led me toward deeper study. Study led me into relationships with teachers, traditions, sound, breath, ancestral practice and the responsibilities of holding space.
Eventually I trained through The Power Path and became a Certified Shamanic Practitioner. But certification did not mark the end of the journey. It gave me another place from which to keep learning.
Beyonca Johnson, spiritually known as Shaman Yawna Shakti.
Continued Learning
I Am Still a Student
I have been in relationship with ayahuasca for more than fifteen years.
That does not mean I have mastered it.
I am still listening.
Still studying.
Still confronting myself.
Still learning how to hold space with more responsibility and discernment.
Still discovering what my gifts ask of me.
I do not want spirituality to become another identity I perform. I want the way I live to become the evidence of what I have learned.
I have walked far enough to hold space for others, and I remain humble enough to know I am still walking.
— Shaman Yawna
Integration & Becoming
The Medicine Opened a Door.
What followed became a life of study.
Shamanism.
Sound.
Breath.
Ceremony.
Service.
Alkhemiyah is one expression of everything I am still learning.