A Different Approach to "Awakening"

[RhythmSpring]

So this might be a little pseudo-sciency, but hear me out, my thinking:

So green tea is a mild MAO-B inhibitor.

I feel the effects of pure ACRB tea on its own with nothing else in my system.

The essence of Caapi is to purge, to rid the body (and mind) of excess--to make space.

Fasting or eating very lightly also makes space, albeit slower.

Green tea is an appetite suppressant. Especially along with peppermint tea, which is a weak kappa-opioid agonist (a la mild salvia effects if your tolerance is really low, as is the case with someone who has done salvia a lot in the past, like me).

I have never drunk coffee in my life and I very very rarely drink green tea, up until recently.

I notice antidepressant effects from drinking green tea

And so...

My aim is to create space within me and to heal my body, mind, heart, and consciousness.

What if I forgo the Caapi altogether in my journey with "Ayahuasca"? And instead, use the green tea, peppermint tea, and other cleansing herbs and fasting to "make space" within my body and mind for the Light of the ACRB/DMT to come through me and work its magic? I feel it on its own anyway...

All my life I have been a dreamer. A daydreamer as well as someone who is almost constantly living in the imaginative, creative realms. Maybe I don't need the Caapi to take me down under into those realms. Maybe what I need is the wakeful energy of green tea and plants that help me reckon with *consensus reality* in order to heal my life and world. Perhaps I have spent too much of my life dreaming and not enough of it doing, and making my dreams happen.

That is why I am attracted to, erm, green teahuasca.

Thoughts?

 

[Intezam]

But what about the caffeine? We find that green tea gives we moar sleeplessness and dropping outta bird-time then just coffee -- if drunk prior to sleeping. We think the action by which the caffeine is released is different in the two.....

That's why we like the idea of xun-haoma, a fermented (haoma) that feeds on raw-honey and (green teas' ) caffeine, but due to (it's higher) alcolol it renders it *non-halaaal for intezam, so we haven't gotten into it, but others have.....(we think). We also (like to) think and ponder if (properly treated) he shou wu (root extract) would turn it (into) a proper potion?

​

* that being said, we had one of the very bessst haoma experiences with fermented haoma (accidently)

 

[tregar]

Coffee drinker here, so we differ a bit. The right kind of caapi will give you the wakeful energy you seek similar to your green tea, should you choose. Not everyone purges with caapi, I drink it bi-weekly and don't purge using a method of brewing and filtering which get's rid of the nausea-causing-to the intestines sediment (outlined elsewhere on this forum, should you be interested--uses a funnel and cotton ball). The purging I have found can often be not a benefit as you end up throwing up everything too soon, then you have no journey, so I do all I can to eliminate un-needed nausea. This of course does not count the weak nausea that may occur should you accidentaly ingest too much of either caapi or leaf at one time.

My course of action is always to look back in time and use only the methods used by Shaman's since time immorial, tried and true Shamanic traditions--which is the ancient and time-tested with hundreds of years of safety and effectivenss--which would be Ayahuasca with Caapi and psychotria or chaliponga, the traditional methods. There is no history of caapi with barks, no tradition of this either, and no proven safe history that goes back hundreds of years, only with the leaf or chaliponga. When you create a new method such as the green tea and bark--ask yourself is this a method that has been used for hundreds of years by Shaman's? Is there a history of this? What is the safety profile? Are there potential unsafe interactions at higher doses? Important questions to ponder.

Rhythmspring said "What if I forgo the Caapi altogether in my journey with "Ayahuasca"?"

No disrespect, but it wouldn't be Ayahuasca without the caapi vine.

Your idea of using green tea instead would be rightly classified as you named it "green teahuasca" instead.

Unraveling the Mystery of the Origin of Ayahuasca

For decades, researchers have puzzled over the mystery of the origin of Ayahuasca, especially the question of how the synergy was discovered between the the two components of the brew: the vine (Ba…

www.ayahuasca.com

Ayahuasca is the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, and the brew prepared from that vine.

From Highpine's excellent paper:

McKenna popularized the idea that Banisteriopsis caapi had no other role in an Ayahuasca brew except to make the DMT orally active. The first anthropologist to adopt the new definition seems to have been Luis Eduardo Luna in 1984. Luna spent time with Terence McKenna, absorbing his perspective, before beginning his fieldwork. Since then, anthropologists have increasingly adopted this definition and filtered their observations through it. The preeminence of the Ayahuasca vine in the indigenous Amazonian world became the elephant in the living room of Ayahuasca studies, with a tacit agreement to pretend it doesn’t exist.

The leaves were Ayahuasca’s “helpers,” I was told, and their purpose was to “brighten and clarify” the visions. The vine is like a cave, and the leaf is like a torch you use to see what is inside the cave. The vine is like a book, and the leaf is like the candle you use to read the book.8 The vine is like a snowy television set, and the leaf helps to tune in the picture. There was a subtle attitude that the need for strong leaf was the sign of a beginner: An experienced ayahuasquero could see the visions even in low light.

Ayahuasca vine is not visionary in the same way as DMT. Visions from vine-only brews are shadowy, monochromatic, like silhouettes, or curling smoke, or clouds moving across the night sky. It is because their visions are usually monochromatic that vines are classified by the color of vision they produce: white, black, blue, red (in my experience, dark maroon). Snakes, the most common vision on Ayahuasca, are considered the manifest spirit of the vine.9 Vine visions can be hard to see; in fact, the “visions” may not be visual at all, but auditory or somatic or intuitive. But the vine carries the content of the message, the teaching, and the insight. The leaf helps illuminate the content, but the teachings are credited to the vine. Vine visions are “frequently associated with writing, to a code that is present in visions…or in the ‘books’ where the spirits keep the secrets of the forest.” (Calavia Saez 2011:135). The vine is The Teacher, The Healer, The Guide. The purpose of drinking Ayahuasca is to receive the message the vine imparts. This is why it is the vine, not the leaf, that is classified by the type of vision it gives. “For them the vine is, in truth, a living guide, a friend, a paternal authority” (Weiskopf 2005:104).

 

[RhythmSpring]

Coffee drinker here, so we differ a bit. The right kind of caapi will give you the wakeful energy you seek similar to your green tea, should you choose.

~What's the right kind of caapi? The yellow caapi I've been drinking now does not affect my wakefulness. It keeps me up like most psychoactives do, but nothing compared to green tea.

Not everyone purges with caapi, I drink it bi-weekly and don't purge using a method of brewing and filtering which get's rid of the nausea-causing-to the intestines sediment (outlined elsewhere on this forum, should you be interested--uses a funnel and cotton ball). The purging I have found can often be not a benefit as you end up throwing up everything too soon, then you have no journey, so I do all I can to eliminate un-needed nausea.

~You call it un-needed, I call it part and parcel with the whole ayahuasca experience. If you're talking about doing it the way shamans have done it for hundreds of years, why are you taking out the sediment that they usually leave in?

This of course does not count the weak nausea that may occur should you accidentaly ingest too much of either caapi or leaf at one time.

My course of action is always to look back in time and use only the methods used by Shaman's since time immorial, tried and true Shamanic traditions--which is the ancient and time-tested with hundreds of years of safety and effectivenss--which would be Ayahuasca with Caapi and psychotria or chaliponga, the traditional methods. There is no history of caapi with barks, no tradition of this either, and no proven safe history that goes back hundreds of years, only with the leaf or chaliponga. When you create a new method such as the green tea and bark--ask yourself is this a method that has been used for hundreds of years by Shaman's? Is there a history of this? What is the safety profile? Are there potential unsafe interactions at higher doses? Important questions to ponder.

~I think safety of using ACRB as the DMT source is pretty well established by all the brave anecdotal reports on here and erowid. Just because it hasn't been used for centuries in the amazon doesn't mean it's not safe. I'm sure if Acacia confusa were native to the Amazon, they'd use it, too.

Rhythmspring said "What if I forgo the Caapi altogether in my journey with "Ayahuasca"?"

No disrespect, but it wouldn't be Ayahuasca without the caapi vine.

~Yes, that's why I called it teahuasca.

Your idea of using green tea instead would be rightly classified as you named it "green teahuasca" instead.

Unraveling the Mystery of the Origin of Ayahuasca

For decades, researchers have puzzled over the mystery of the origin of Ayahuasca, especially the question of how the synergy was discovered between the the two components of the brew: the vine (Ba…

www.ayahuasca.com

Ayahuasca is the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, and the brew prepared from that vine.

From Highpine's excellent paper:

McKenna popularized the idea that Banisteriopsis caapi had no other role in an Ayahuasca brew except to make the DMT orally active. The first anthropologist to adopt the new definition seems to have been Luis Eduardo Luna in 1984. Luna spent time with Terence McKenna, absorbing his perspective, before beginning his fieldwork. Since then, anthropologists have increasingly adopted this definition and filtered their observations through it. The preeminence of the Ayahuasca vine in the indigenous Amazonian world became the elephant in the living room of Ayahuasca studies, with a tacit agreement to pretend it doesn’t exist.

The leaves were Ayahuasca’s “helpers,” I was told, and their purpose was to “brighten and clarify” the visions. The vine is like a cave, and the leaf is like a torch you use to see what is inside the cave. The vine is like a book, and the leaf is like the candle you use to read the book.8 The vine is like a snowy television set, and the leaf helps to tune in the picture. There was a subtle attitude that the need for strong leaf was the sign of a beginner: An experienced ayahuasquero could see the visions even in low light.

Ayahuasca vine is not visionary in the same way as DMT. Visions from vine-only brews are shadowy, monochromatic, like silhouettes, or curling smoke, or clouds moving across the night sky. It is because their visions are usually monochromatic that vines are classified by the color of vision they produce: white, black, blue, red (in my experience, dark maroon). Snakes, the most common vision on Ayahuasca, are considered the manifest spirit of the vine.9 Vine visions can be hard to see; in fact, the “visions” may not be visual at all, but auditory or somatic or intuitive. But the vine carries the content of the message, the teaching, and the insight. The leaf helps illuminate the content, but the teachings are credited to the vine. Vine visions are “frequently associated with writing, to a code that is present in visions…or in the ‘books’ where the spirits keep the secrets of the forest.” (Calavia Saez 2011:135). The vine is The Teacher, The Healer, The Guide. The purpose of drinking Ayahuasca is to receive the message the vine imparts. This is why it is the vine, not the leaf, that is classified by the type of vision it gives. “For them the vine is, in truth, a living guide, a friend, a paternal authority” (Weiskopf 2005:104).

~That is fascinating to read, and confirms a lot of my first hand accounts with ayahuasca and its components drunk separately. I've often mused that it is actually the DMT that potentiates the vine, not the other way around as is most often said.

It's worth mentioning, however, that when I drink ACRB on its own, I experience something, and it's invariably good. It's physically healing, as well. If I had to describe it, it the feeling of inviting an angel or three to the vicinity, and they whisper things into my ear every so often. My mind quiets, and I find myself squirming about in a pleasurable, health-giving way. It feels like being guided in thought and in action.

 

[BundleflowerPower]

Interesting. But there is something special about caapi. After drinking brews made with all of these plants, caapi has some kind of refined spirit in it. I see what you mean about creating space, and I just don't see what can do it better than caapi if you want to flood yourself with light. (Haven't tried iboga yet though).

 

[RhythmSpring]

The idea is fasting. Green tea helps me to focus on life and temporarily forget about food. Fasting is it's own medicine (quoted from my local herbalist).

 

[tregar]

Rhythmspring, let us know how your experiment turns out, should you look into this some more, interesting idea you came up with, be safe and happy journeys.