What Does a Yaminawa Initiation Feel Like?

Ross Edgley says initiation with the Yaminawa tribe felt cathartic. The ceremony ended with a good feeling, short of euphoria, and a sense of wow, we did it. He is not advocating or recommending the week to anyone. He thinks he may have been pushing a button in the brain, a pattern he recognized from a study, and he says many times in his life he was pushing the button.

The first night of ayahuasca went wrong. Sweat poured off him as if somebody had thrown a bucket of water over him, his tongue swelled bigger than his mouth, and projectile vomiting purged his system. He turned to his friend, who works at Glastonbury, and his friend was licking a feather from the floor to taste the colours. Someone later told Ross Edgley it is like a roller coaster: you cannot get off, you cannot fight it, and you have to sit it out.

The group caught a snake and he had to bite the tongue out of its mouth, then keep silent for the next 48 hours, or they said the spirit of the snake would hunt him for life. He held a tree about four meters up while people smacked the trunk so fire ants ran up and bit him. He got down, they hit a hornet's nest, and he had to take the stings without a sound. He still does not know whether the relief came from ayahuasca or from the pain.