Halfway Through - Breathwork as an Anchor in the Jungle

We are officially two weeks in, which means we are exactly eight Ayahuasca ceremonies deep. At this point, the jungle has completely worn down our defenses. Emotion rises fast out here, and the body feels absolutely everything. Some nights are incredibly beautiful, and others are just straight-up overwhelming.

In those intense moments on the mat, we’ve realized you can’t reach for a massive cosmic insight to save you. You can only reach for your breath.

We’ve just been focusing on breathing slowly and fully, letting our nervous systems soften instead of bracing against the intensity. It has been our absolute anchor, not just while the medicine is moving through us, but in the long, hot days between ceremonies. Integration at the halfway mark feels incredibly tender. Your body is physically exhausted, and old emotions tend to surface when you’re just trying to lie in your hammock and rest.

Because we were feeling that deep need for grounding, last night we decided to offer a breathwork journey for some of the incredible humans and facilitators sharing this space with us at Nihue Rao.

We didn't do it to introduce something separate or competing with the plant medicine. We did it as a pure layer of support. When you are sitting in this much intensity, the breath is the fastest way to create actual physical safety in your skin. And when the body feels genuinely safe, it can go into those deeper, scarier territories without needing to force anything or ending up completely fried.

The breath doesn’t replace the heavy lifting of the medicine; it just makes the whole process sustainable. Sharing that space with the community here was a massive reminder of why we do this work. We are having some of the most honest, heartfelt experiences of our lives out here, and we're just trying to stay out of our own way and let it unfold.