I Was Body-Shamed By A Shaman I Went To For Healing From My Mother's Death

During an Ayahuasca ceremony, the "healer" decided to take the opportunity, in front of everyone, to critique and advise me on how I could change my body to her standards.

Hello honeys!

I should warn you right now that there are going be a lot of little digressions in this intro because my head is packed full as today is already a day. How is yours?

First thing, the press wrote about something that we’ve been talking about for a while here, which is that yes, I’m doing what I promised you I would do and writing my memoir. It’s part-way done and it’s juicy and you’re going to love it. Thank you all for the big encouragement to write it. I don't think I would have started if it weren't for knowing how much you all actually want to read it.

So that happened while I was scrambling to get today’s piece ready to run, and then another thing happened: I heard back from the offending mistexter (I’m going to call her Miss Texter from now on) we talked about where you gave me all the great suggestions on how to reply. Meaning that before I could send her a response or even choose between the 🖕 and some other more judicious replies you came up with, she wrote again asking for payment for something she never did. What?! So now it’s all kind of a moot point because I paid her and then made it clear that we are never working together again. So that’s solved!

Then I reached a pause point as I was waiting for photo captions and considered that I’ve been working nonstop for days on a couple of different deadlines, including that memoir one and including some AJPT story ones coming up. So to do something to take my mind off all of it, rather than heroin I go take a SoulCycle class.

First let me preface this anecdote by saying that I hadn't been able to figure out why my new deodorant wasn’t working the last few days, even though it is the same brand I’ve been using (a brand I will not name here because I don’t want to be judged for all the chemicals in it, but it is not a spray so it is likely only me that it’s killing).

Now I know this will sound fake because I’ve already told you here how I got body-odor shamed at SoulCycle a while ago, but this is all real and new and true. To re-set the scene: I was on my way to the class and felt my armpits get sweaty. That’s when I had the eureka moment: I had never taken the little plastic top off of the deodorant. So for a couple of days I had been wiping smooth clear plastic over my skin and wondering why my natural body odors were not diminished. It was too late to do anything about it in time for this class, so I forged ahead. Go in, take my usual bike (29), look up and who is on the bike next to me, but my biggest crush from all of Bachelor Nation, DALE!

I don’t think anyone sees it but me, but one reason I love Dale Moss so much is because I think he looks a lot like my great friend/platonic love Jimmy Fallon, therefore I attribute a lot of wonderful qualities to him that are not necessarily deserved. Though on his first season of Bachelorette I really did think he was a wonderful guy who I really did think I should marry. It was only on this last round of Paradise when he kept saying “deaded it” that I took pause. (And if any of you know what I am talking about, please make me feel better about my use of the time I have remaining on this earth by telling me that in the comments.) But anyway, still a huge crush and the only Bachelor contender besides Andrew Firestone I ever thought I could actually be with. I mean, if life were Bachelor In Paradise.

Of course I had to say something to him about him being him. Which led to him getting my name and chatting with me and then lots of fist bumps and handlebar taps throughout the “ride”. When the weights portion of the class came, of course Karyn, wonderful instructor though she is, had to make us do overhead presses and you know how close those bike seats are to one another? It’s as though Covid never happened. I wouldn’t say I was mortified because though I am a 15-year-old inside, I’ve had people I didn’t know take a baby out of my vagina, so I can pretty much accept the fact that someone is smelling my not too great smells. But I did feel bad for him having to sit next to that the whole time. The good news is that I think it made him nicer to me and more charitable about the fact that I sat down for a lot of the class. Which says a lot about his character as my future husband. Anyway, in the midst of all this crazy work stuff, that little love story happened, so yay. Anyone who wants to tell me the latest on whether he and Kat are still together, I’m interested!

And now, without further drivel, here is Amy’s piece, the one I accepted more quickly than any so far (on the way to that Gyno appointment – Pap smear all good!). Let’s get in there in the comments and talk about body shaming and “healers” and definitely tell Amy if you’ve had any experience that resembles hers because I’m sure she’s not alone and it always helps to know that.

I adore you all so so much.

Mrs. Jane Moss

In Quito, Ecuador, 2018, on my way to the retreat.

By Amy Scheiner

The first thing the shaman tells you is to never trust an ayahuasca fart. This was not what I expected to hear when I signed up for a ten-day long ayahuasca retreat in Ecuador eighteen months after my mother’s unexpected death. I had spent months researching ayahuasca’s healing properties and its potential side effects, which include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and hallucinations. While I was skeptical of taking Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in a country I had never been to, I was desperate to find some sort of movement in my grief. The shock and loss of my soul mate had left me in an inescapable depression. And even though I had been going to therapy twice a week, I felt stuck. I couldn’t seem to get to the next level of grief, whatever that was. I was angry, inconsolable, and hopeless. I wanted her back, but I also wanted to live again. This incongruence left the twenty-seven-year-old me seeking alternatives.

However, this wasn’t the first time I had sought out help. I had been in inpatient and outpatient centers for eating disorders in my early twenties, an illness I had struggled with nearly my entire life. After being the poster child for the “obesity epidemic,” attempting to fix my body through countless fad diets (think low-fat, no-carb, diet-soda regimes of the early aughts), and undergoing bariatric surgery at 17, I was finally in recovery. But now, I had new demons to face.

Me with retreat dogs while there, 2018

The journey to the retreat center was vertical. By the time I reached the mountaintop in rural Ecuador, I felt weak from the “dieta”-- the mandatory diet of no caffeine, no sugar, no SSRIs (not my best decision)— which I agreed to maintain for weeks preceding the trip. The dieta was intended to cleanse your body, to allow the ayahuasca to do its job without any external interferences. So far, I was cranky and hungry.

The retreat was stunning; verdant high green rolling hills, avocado trees, sharp chuquiragua flowers in bloom, blue jacardas, San Pedro cacti (another hallucinogen we would take). As I stepped off the bus, the thin air of Andes mountains embraced me, along with the staff and volunteers. This was a place of hugs. Huts with flowers and birds brightly painted on the walls were scattered around the property, alongside picnic tables under wooden pavilions, gazebos with long-haired men playing the guitar, open-aired kitchens, and shared bathrooms.

The ayahuasca ceremonies were held at night, leaving the days open for yoga classes, sound baths, hikes through the Andes, and family meetings. Everyone was welcoming and friendly, ready with a full-tooth smile, a hug, and a vegan meal. Of course, I liked the hippie vibe— I had been living in Oregon for a couple years at that point— but deep down, I was still a cynical, East Coast Jew who preferred logic and science over prayer and astral projection.

A group of other attendees there chatting next to the picnic tables where meals were held, also 2018

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While the retreat felt like an incarnation of Eden, I couldn’t help but notice the absence of the local Ecuadorians. Created and operated by white Americans, the shamans were a mix of American and Mexican transplants. But the moment I saw the owner and lead shaman, I felt instantly drawn to her. She was a goddess: long, blond hair, flowy skirt, brightly colored stones adoring her neck, wrists, and fingers. She explained she had discovered the healing properties of ayahuasca years before, and left the US for a life dedicated to the medicine. I wished I could be like her, so free and in touch with nature. I felt heavy, worn down by life and loss.

To say I was nervous before my first ayahuasca ceremony is an understatement. I was shaking. I had limited experiences with psychedelics and didn’t know how I would react. Would it burn a hole in my brain? Would I think I was flying and try to jump off a cliff? Or would nothing happen at all?

That first ceremony, over thirty of us lay in a circle around a fire in the pavilion. The Mexican shaman, an earthy man with kind eyes and soft voice, quieted the group with his presence. As the sun set, I felt my stomach grumble: we weren’t allowed to eat or drink water for the entire day. Anxious and dehydrated, I looked to the woman next to me who seemed lost in thought.

We laid in these makeshift beds around a fire before the first ayahuasca ceremony.

After prayers around the fire and snorting liquid tobacco to cleanse the body, (a truly awful experience) each of us drank from the same chalice filled with ayahuasca root. It tasted bitter and unfamiliar. I lay under an unwashed, woolen blanket that smelled like feet, watching the blazing fire, waiting for something to happen.

Most people tend to fall into one of two categories after taking ayahuasca: either a mind high or body high. That is, those who feel its effects mentally— seeing bright colors, having visions, hearing voices— or those who feel it in their physical body. I was the latter, which seemed apt to me, since most of my trauma was in the body. I felt deeply attuned to my body—tingling all over, aware of my breath rising and falling in my chest, and I placed my hands on my stomach and felt my womb glow with an unnameable warmth. This may sound “woo-woo,” and even as I write it I’m rolling my eyes, but I felt some sort of feminine energy deep in my core.

As the night progressed, the shaman sang mystical songs, the fire flared, people vomited into buckets, and it all became too much. I was suffocating. We were so close to one another, our bodies touching, the fire burning too strongly. I needed to get out.

I left the circle, breaking the holy connection, and ran out of the pavilion and into the moonlight. Lying flat on the cool, damp grass, my tears soaked into the earth. I felt my body sink into the earth. Layers upon layers, I fell through the ground, as if gravity disappeared. I cried for my mom.

The head shaman— the American goddess— ran to me and wrapped me in the itchy woolen blankets, guiding my body into a child’s pose. Immediately, I was comforted. She held me there and inhaled deeply, and I felt all my grief leave my body and enter hers. My tears came to an immediate halt. She had sucked up all of my sadness. If ever I believed in magic, it was at this moment. Her breath washed away all of my pain. I returned to my place in the circle, feeling more at peace.

The ceremony ended, and we all returned to our rooms to sleep late into the morning. The start of my ayahuasca journey was what I had hoped for— the beginning of healing.

As the days went on I found myself letting my guard down. I was happy to be there. Happy to have the opportunity to connect with nature, with others seeking the same thing— a way to feel better. People from all over the world, in all stages of life, came to this mountain in Ecuador in search of healing. We were all the same.

San Pedro cacti at the retreat. Native to the Andes mountains, these were one of the hallucinogens we would take during our last ceremony.

As I spoke with the participants and volunteers, I gathered information about the American shaman— the woman who had absorbed my grief. She was the first white woman to pass all of the trials and initiations to become a shaman in South America. She had sat on a mountain meditating for three days and three nights without food or water. She endured physical pain, denial of the body, connection with the spirit. One volunteer told me that she could hear the call of the plants, read minds, and see beings in another dimension. She also had grown up in poverty and experienced horrendous abuse and addiction until she found the Calling. So devoted to denying the body, it was rumored she experienced severe health issues from the neglect.

The last tidbit of gossip made me suspicious— I had spent enough time in treatment to recognize an eating disorder when I saw one. On top of that, it was difficult not to compare my body to everyone around me. At the time, I would have been described as “straight” sized, but everyone around me was vegan thin. I was not vegan, and if I wanted to be that thin, I would have to revert to my destructive past behaviors of restricting and purging, which, fortunately, I didn’t do anymore.

Me resting in a hammock after the first ayahuasca ceremony.

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The American shaman led our last ceremony. Over the week, I became more entranced by her, her divine healing skills, her spiritual connection. Unlike the previous ceremonies, this one took place during the day, not under the protection of the pavilion, but under the blistering sun. After taking the medicine, the shaman would offer a prayer for each of us, words of wisdom to take with us as we returned to our lives. Each participant took their turn to approach her, cry over their pain, express hope for their future. A man who lost a child, a woman who was raped, a student feeling lost. And she spoke to each of them like a god to man, her unparalleled wisdom and advice providing solace.

When it was my turn, I crawled on my knees in front of her, waiting for her benediction. As I write this seven years later, I cannot recall the healing words she offered me to relieve my grief. They might have been memorable had she not then embraced me and concluded by saying, “You have such a beautiful face, but you need to exercise.” My gaze turned away, the back of my neck hot. Everyone heard her. Thirty pairs of eyes directed at me. The only sound the birds tweeting from the trees.

Decades of diets and body shaming and disordered eating rose to the surface, and my pulse raced. I pulled away, but she clung to me tighter. “I mean, people like us, we need to exercise.” She meant those who didn’t have zero percent body fat, those who had hips and an ass and a round face. Those who didn’t and couldn’t deny their bodies.

“What happened to