Iboga: Death & Dying Pt 2
Read iboga: death & dying pt 1 here
Returning to life
When I was coming out of the experience 36 hours later, I heard Jason (my boyfriend in the next room) crying and ‘knew’ it was because I had died; I was upset because I ‘knew’ he had to call my parents and tell them I was dead and I ‘knew’ they would be devastated.
I was feeling horrible physically which deepened the idea that I was dead and when I told the medical staff they gave me concerned looks. Naturally I became even more convinced I was deceased. Jason came into the room asking for a hug and I ‘knew’ it was because he wanted to see me one last time before my body was taken away.
When Jason came into the room he hugged me and it felt like life itself. He suggested we sit outside in the sunshine and once I was finally able to get up, we sat outside. My experience tumbled out of my mouth in discoherent fragments and I told him how much of a failure I was, I didn’t deserve him, everything was my fault and I asked him if he called my parents - to my surprise he laughed and asked to clarify what the heck I was talking about - I continued almost drunkenly: “but I’m dead and someone needs to tell my parents.” He assured me I was not dead and in fact, very much alive as I had been reborn through this process. You can only imagine the relief I felt!
We sat in the bright afternoon light of springtime in Portugal looking at the yellow flowers that reached and stretched out into the field in front of us. We talked, connected, shared insights and vulnerability, cuddled and loved one another without any resistance, hesitation or expectation. The love I felt in these moments exceeds any love I’ve ever felt in my life. It was love in the form of life after death; the most alive and vibrant love I’ve ever experienced.
A day or two later we did 5MeO-DMT which is a very powerful psychedelic to complete the circle of the ceremony and it was the most beautiful DMT experience I have ever had: I inhaled the medicine and a whole universe of experiences tumbled out of my mouth as I exhaled, and my body relaxed down to the ground. I began to stretch, and the further I stretched the better it felt, I stretched so big that to this day I believe I’m an inch taller!
I laughed with the purity, effervescence and unencumberedness of a child’s laugh: a laugh free from the wisdom and pain of life’s experiences. I sobbed and the sobbing felt just as good or better than the laughter: it felt like I was releasing the deepest sadness that had occupied my internal organs and dwelled in my DNA. I laughed and cried for myself, my family, my friends, and my ancestors, I laughed and cried for everyone I knew, and then everyone who had ever been known.
It felt delicious to allow it to come out, to be expressed, to be witnessed, and to be healed.
the healing process
The healing process continued with similar intensity and took another full week. I was exhausted and felt like a raw nerve walking around; my nervous system felt fried, lights were too bright, any sounds were too loud, people were way to people-y.
I felt like something immortal had just been demoted to mortality. I found it difficult to interact with my fellow humans. I had just been in hell - it was hard to relate.
During my healing process in this heavy drug-like, dream-like state, I found out that one of my closest friends died. Tiffany Barsotti was my mentor, medical intuitive, spiritual counselor, roommate, co-worker in the realm of biofield and subtle energy sciences and a light in the life of myself and anyone who was lucky enough to know her.
It felt physically unbelievable: because I was feeling dead, it was impossible that Tif and I were both dead. Leaning into to the drug like dream-like state I felt like I was in the ‘woods between worlds’ I was transitioning from death to life and she was passing by going the opposite direction. In this nebulous space in between time I reached out to Tif, I felt her presence and energy. She visited, energetically hugged me tightly and assured me that I was not dead and would continue to live; and she shared that she was on the most incredible adventure through her passing. As I continue to edit this blog months later, she visits me often in meditation and dreams and I am forever blessed with the memories I have with her, and in heightened states of awareness when I feel her sitting next to me and jokingly pointing out a pattern of mine I was previously unaware of.
Being in this state of in between life and death felt oddly synchronous because I felt she was near me in this state where nothing and everything was simultaneously real; where everything was impossible and possible at the same time.
waking up into my aliveness
Now that I have fully come back from this experience I feel AMAZING. When I speak, my statements feel more authentic to my truth and my soul. My listening to understand has improved, my desire to connect and understand others has deepened. It feels like the back of my brain woke up.
I am inspired to live deeper, I feel healthy, vibrant and alive. I feel centered in myself, aligned in my soul and grounded in my path, purpose, and mission.
I am so grateful for my courage to work with this plant medicine; I am grateful for this Hero’s Journey through this spiritual ceremony and deep healing process with Iboga.
In this space I realized that grief is a gift and that sitting with grief allows the sadness to become sacred.
Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.
―Jamie Anderson
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I hope you enjoyed my personal journey with Iboga. If you have any questions about it I would love to connect with you. Once again, it’s important to select a good center with a medical team if you decide to take this journey! It’s hard, but worth it!
Please enjoy my Free Grief Sound Healing Session inspired by Tiffany’s love and light by clicking here.
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This blog is dedicated to and in honor of the life, the light, the love and the work of Rev. Tiffany Barsotti M.Th, PhD.
Please consider donating to her fund here to continue her work and legacy to advance the field of biofield sciences, and increase collaborations that foster connections between healing practitioners and scientists.
emotions are like puppies
Emotions are like puppies. They all want to be loved and held and cuddled. They are also all worthy of love and cuddles.
In my perspective there is NO SUCH THING as a bad emotion. Anger and sadness deserve as much love and affection as joy and ecstasy. Joy and ecstasy are easy to love because they feel good! Anger and sadness may be harder to love, but they have more to teach us.
Anger Protects
I believe that Anger is a Protector Emotion. Have you ever felt sad or powerless for so long that finally Anger came to protect you? To light a fire under your ass, to initiate and instigate you? To pick you up and out of sadness and depression and throw you into action?
In some schools of thought Anger can live in and around the Solar Plexus Chakra which has to do with our drive, determination, will and ego. It makes sense that Anger can be instigating! It’s literally pushing us forward into our destiny. Ego is not necessarily a bad thing as it’s purpose is to protect the Inner Child. It can be seen as negative if it runs our life without us knowing.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. ~ Dr. Carl Jung
There is no such thing as a bad emotion
Sometimes as children we are taught there are ‘bad’ emotions but this is a lie. When a child is angry or reactive this can mean a boundary is crossed. Sometimes children do not feel comfortable hugging family friends because they can feel like strangers (if there is a lot of time between visits). Parents, sometimes embarrassed by this, will override the child’s boundaries. This can teach a child at young age that their bodies are not their own and they have no bodily autonomy. Obviously this is problematic at the time and later in life when children grow to pre-teens and young adults. If their voices and boundaries didn’t matter then, why would they matter now?
Sometimes parents do not like when children say “no,” as it’s seen as an act of defiance; but it can also be a child setting a boundary. When parents deny a child setting healthy boundaries it strips them of many things. Let’s dive deeper down this rabbit hole: a classmate wants something they have, do they say no? An older person wants to touch them inappropriately, can they say no? Someone hurts them, do they tell? How can they with no voice, no boundaries and no bodily autonomy?
all emotions are valid
Sometimes in childhood when we’re joyful the volume of our voice increases and a parent or peer shushes us and tells us we are “too loud.” This is around the time we learn that our joy isn’t welcome which can cause us to emotionally shut down and physically tighten around the diaphragm. This tightening can cause shallow breathing and a low vagal tone. ‘Vagal tone is a measure of cardiovascular function that facilitates adaptive responses to environmental challenge. Low vagal tone is associated with poor emotional and attentional regulation in children and has been conceptualized as a marker of sensitivity to stress.’
All emotions are valid and the whole point of an emotion is expression. Dr. Candace Pert writes in Molecules of Emotion that an emotion’s full lifespan is a matter of seconds. It begins, climaxes (if allowed) and then resolves itself. By fully experiencing our joy / sadness / anger / ecstasy we are allowing the full expression and complete lifecycle of that emotion.
the only bad emotion is a stuck one
There are many schools of thought on this: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) believes that certain emotions will cause certain meridians and chakras to become discoherent and/or stagnant; by using herbs and acupuncture you can clear congestion and bring about wellness or ‘balance.’ Grief can sit in the lungs, frustration in the gallbladder, anger in the liver, overthinking in the stomach / spleen, emotional and mental digestion in the stomach / intestines and so on. In my experience, the only ‘bad’ emotion is a stuck one, as stuck emotions can cause physical ailments.
When I went through my healing crisis around 20 years old I was only able to fully heal my physical body by also balancing my mind and emotions. I talk about this often as this is when I came to realize that ‘healing’ comes from integrating the mind, body and soul as they are all interrelated; this is also when I dove much deeper into holistic healing, TCM and Ayurvedic medicine.
Later in life during my Saturn Return (Dark Night of the Soul) I was able to use and benefit from what I had already learned to help heal my 27 year old body from shingles. Shingles generally lasts for 3 months and is super painful as it affects the nerves, mine manifested in my face and neck. Luckily, I only suffered with shingles for a week because I came at it from an emotional and mental perspective, as well as treating it physically.
If you ever need another guide on relating emotions to physical illnesses, Dr. Louise Hay has compiled a list you can find here.
emotions are like puppies
And finally, emotions are like puppies. YOUR puppies. Joy and ecstasy are your adorable clean fluffy puppies and anger and sadness are your adorable fluffy puppies that accidentally got covered in mud. The important truth is that they are the same and they are yours. Your fluffy clean puppies come to you for love and you pick them up and hug them easily without hesitation because they’re clean.
Your silly adorable puppies that fell in mud cannot get the mud off themselves, so they are coming to you for help. They need your love, acceptance, and require more time and patience then your other puppies to remove the mud. Once you remove the mud you see the truth - that they are just as deserving and worthy of your love.
This is the same for your emotions, they are all valid and they deserve acceptance. In accepting your emotions and loving them for who they are and what they’re teaching you reduce resistance, you quicken the healing process, and integrate the lesson quicker.
Healing is not fixing the parts of you that are ‘broken’ - healing is loving all parts of yourself anyways <3
I dedicate this blog to my adorable fluffy Toby (pictured) when he got sprayed by a skunk twice - in the same week - during the winter - at night - after I had showered and was cozy in bed about to fall asleep :p
Furever Toby <3