I need to preface this article by noting that it’s not good practice to advertise your plant medicine experiences. I’ve hesitated to share my own, but with the many requests from my community & friends; I want you all to understand, from the best of my abilities, the seriousness of these ancient practices & medicines and life-long impact it has had on me.

I’ve watched world of spirituality & healing evolve, especially during the midst of the pandemic, which is something I’m elated to witness but also have my own worries about the Western world’s aggressive approach.

I was born into a non-traditional American family. With my dad being Chinese, born in Shanghai, I was raised with a different set of beliefs that are highly influenced by Eastern philosophy. You see the world differently when you have had the principles of Taoism, Carl Jung, Paulo Freire, Paulo Coehlo, Confucius, and Buddha jammed down your throat from a young age; on top of my father being a counselor & professor of Psychology. I’m not saying that I am any more evolved, “woke”, or conscious than any of you but this upbringing has impacted my path and they way I have approached worldly practices and respect to different cultures & traditions.

Without oversharing or overexposing myself, I was put on a healing journey from a young age. I was always a “highly sensitive” child and by age 14 I fell to anorexia, bulimia, which transpired into spouts of anxiety & depression for years to come. I felt for nearly 7 years I was just staying afloat, even though from the outside I seemed like a high-functioning individual.

Over the years of study and travel, I attracted a certain type of person into my sphere through serendipitous & spontaneous coincidences. I flocked to them like moths to a light and same for them to me. When I started reflecting on these “types” of people I seemed to be meeting in strange corners of the world (Mexico, Australia, Brazil), it made me question what this was all about. The only thing I could really follow was my intuition, telling me that these people & communities are right for me right now. It felt like some secret underground society, but I now understand that these were very soulful connections that are playing a role in a larger script of my life.

By the time I was 19, I was experiencing debilitating periods. These were not just painful menstrual cramps, but traumatizing painful eruptions within the first two hours of bleeding that left me on the floor of a public bathrooms praying for mercy, my face white, lips blue, and entering some sort of trance state to deal with the pain. I’ve been managing that pain for 11 years to date, and it wasn't until I turned 27 that I decided to take a hard look into what may be causing it. Doctor’s say endometriosis (a disorder in which tissue that normally lines the uterus grows outside the uterus. With endometriosis, the tissue can be found on the ovaries, fallopian tubes or the intestines).

I started with diet, sleep, and movement/rest, even going as so far to enroll myself into a nutritional therapy program via Nutritional Therapy Association & becoming a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. This was something I did for myself with no aspirations to become a working nutritionist. (Although today, I work one-on-one with women hoping to find balance in their bodies.) I realized prior to the course and definitely after working 1:1 with clients that my acute sensitivity, heightened intuition, and emotional intelligence is a gift from God, if there is a God, and I should be using it to make impactful change for people. For many years, I saw this gift as a burden.

As I began to understand my relationship (or lack their of) with nourishment and self-nurturing, led me to uncover the dysfunction that had been playing out between my mother & I for about a decade. I can trace it back to when I began puberty, better known as my entry into womanhood. This put, first me, then the two of us in therapy for about 1 year.

As the mother/daughter dynamic began to mend and evolve, I began to look into myself as a potential mother, the kind I may some day be and the mothering I’d been practicing on myself & others. With more than a decade of body shaming, self-rejection, self-criticism, and low self-esteem; I started to put the emotional damage & uterine dysfunction relationship together; as we are all becoming familiar with the emotional, mental, spiritual connection to our bodies and that all disease manifests from our minds (Book references: Anatomy of the Spirit / Women’s Bodies Women’s Wisdom).

I’m going to skip 1 million chapters, but it was winter 2020 I was doing acupuncture with a Chinese Medicine doctor who also had endometriosis and had gone through all the surgeries, met with specialists, and more to be told that she would never conceive since her Fallopian tubes were scarred shut from the endometriosis; until she was 39 after a past-life regression session she fell pregnant with her miracle baby. During our acupuncture session, she hoped to move stagnant qi (energy) around my body to help my menstruation. I entered a meditation / relaxed state, she asked me to bring a warm light to my uterus. The first thing I saw was bright, LED, fluorescent lights, myself on an operating table, and surgical tools invading my uterus. It was terrifying and I began to cry on the massage table. I was scared. I asked in silence (and I don’t know who I asked) to “get me out of here” and the scene quickly changed to a quiet cave with a small campfire burning. Around the campfire were my two grandmothers (Carmella on the Italian side, and Nai Nai on my Chinese side). I was present for the death of both of these women in real life. They were sitting around the fire together, quiet, calm, staying warm. I felt delight, relief, and peace with them… in my uterus? When I opened my eyes on the massage table, I wiped tears from my face and looked at my naturopath like, “Am I crazy?” She was smiling at me and channeling everything good & healing my way, truly holding space for me to explore whatever realm I was in safely. We discussed for the rest of my session.

Within a few days, a soulful friend and curandera (Mexican medicine woman) from Baja messaged me and invited my partner & I to a ceremony on her farm. I did not want go, but when I told my partner about it; he said we needed to go. He had been on his own intensive healing path for 2 years and a witness of mine. My curandera friend was the only person on the planet I would trust with any sort of plant medicine ceremony; she had deep Mexican roots/ancestry and a life 100% dedicated to spiritual practice. I need to state that I was not seeking this out, I did not want to go, and I had no interest in experiencing anything psychedelic or psychologically thrilling. This experience came to me in divine timing. At that time in my life, I was as sober as a one could be and planned to stay that way (I’m someone that enjoys my sobriety & loves to stay clear). I do not smoke marijuana, rarely drink, as both don’t agree with my constitution, and takes psychedelic experiences seriously. So, I committed to the ceremony and we booked our flights. For the next few weeks we were on a serious dieta. A dieta is a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual diet that you have to do prior to any sort of plant medicine ceremony. This was one of the most crucial things to do in order to prepare and enter a ceremony safely. It’s like a monk-state, disconnecting from social media, socializing, people you do not feel safe with, sex, television, work, caffeine, salt, meat, fermented or spicy foods, and more. It is ideal to practice the dieta for at least 1 month, but I only had time for about 3 weeks. I began each day with meditation, breathing, and journaling. I was readying my mind and all of my intentions, doing the best I could to go into this experience as pure and clear as I could.

Ayahuasca is an ancient plant from a vine in Amazonian Peru, cared for by the indigenous Shipibo people. Ayahuasca or Aya is known as the Grandmother plant while Huachuma or San Pedro is known as the Grandfather. In many ceremonies, some people will take Aya one night and San Pedro the next to balance the male/female energies. In my case, I was going to sit with and meet the Grandmother for 3 nights.

If you have any interest in hearing more about my personal experience during ceremony please feel free to reach out hello@jenyih.com and I would be more than happy to discuss the details with you. I highly recommend discussing with someone before you decide to meet the Grandmother especially if you have hesitations, concerns, or unsure of your intentions. This is a potent medicine and should be taken as seriously as a medical surgery. I can safely say that my experience was a profound one, but that this medicine is not for everyone and to be taken with care before, during, and after.