Ayahuasca, Soma & The Subtle Body
“Unless energy flows freely through the body, the pure light of consciousness will remain obscured.
So take these physical practices to heart!”
-Rigdzin Jigme Lingpa, 18th century
(Source: Tibetan Yoga: Principles and Practices, pg. 129, Dr. Ian Baker).On one level, plant medicines, like spiritual awakening, work in ways that are mysterious. To improve the structure and readability of the article, you can add some titles between paragraphs. Here are some suggestions:
These titles can help break down the content into more digestible sections for the readers. These processes help us see beyond just logic, trying to understand and categorize everything neatly. They open us up to something bigger.
Yet it’s still helpful to have a map to guide us, even as we acknowledge that the map is not the territory. We don’t need to cling to these maps or hold them up as true in any absolute sense. We can hold them lightly.
The view that we bring to meditation, and plant medicines, is crucial. The view can be a difference between plant medicines deepening us further into delusion or closer towards wisdom. In locating accurate maps for plant medicine journeys I have found that the nondual Tantric paths of both Buddhism (Dzogchen, Mahamudra) and “Hinduism” (Kashmir Shaivism, Sri Vidya) to be particularly well aligned with these medicines.
Tibetan Buddhist scholar Bob Thurman defines Tantra as “a technology for transforming the mind and the world away from the mode of ignorance and toward the mode of enlightenment.” As a practitioner in both of these traditions, I relate to Ayahuasca and Soma as Tantric technologies, or we might say skillful means for awakening along a Tantric path.
Spiritual practices such as meditation, yoga, and plant medicine have benefits that go beyond the practices alone. These benefits also come from the larger system that these practices are a part of.
The benefits of these practices are not limited to just the practices themselves. The overall system plays a significant role in enhancing the benefits of these spiritual practices. What we want is a clear sense of path to guide and ground us.
A reason that all Buddhist traditions, as well as Shaiva Shakta Tantra, emphasize the importance of approaching practice with the right view as a necessary foundation. In articulating a view of a plant medicine path through a nondual contemplative and yogic framework, it is very helpful to draw on maps of the subtle body from these traditions: those yogic traditions of India (Tantric Buddhism and Hinduism) and those Taoist traditions of China (Medical Qi Gong, Chinese Medicine).
On the left, an example of the Indian subtle body map central to hatha yoga.
On the right, the subtle body map of meridians found in Medical Qi Gong and Chinese Medicine.
What are subtle body maps?
In these systems, the subtle body is a map for the flow of energy in the body. In these systems, these maps explain the purpose of how spiritual technologies such as meditation, physical yoga (asana), breathwork (pranayama), mantra and other practices serve to optimize health and well being and to facilitate spiritual awakening.
The goal of spiritual awakening can entail various stages and openings but the essence is a nondual recognition of the nature of consciousness (waking up to something beyond the small sense of self, awakening to our true nature, to our interdependence with all of life).
If that makes no sense to you conceptually at this point that’s ok. The point is that this is not anything woo-woo, but rather that this is an insight into the nature of consciousness that is universal to human consciousness. The benefits of recognizing this truth lie at the heart of mystical traditions from all religions, though, in my view, some religions have a far more developed contemplative path and set of instructions for recognizing these insights. This does not require you to identify as religious or accept things on blind faith, but rather this is an invitation to investigate the truth of your own experience, directly, beyond the conceptual mind.
Critically, for both health and awakening, the subtle body is also the place where emotions and psychological patterns are stored. Integral to the practice of yoga and plant medicine for facilitating both physical and mental health, as well as spiritual awakening, has to do with opening these channels in the subtle body and allowing energy to flow through them freely.
The traditional view is that karmic knots (habitual patterns, psychological imprints, traumatic events) are contractions that form in the energy channels of the body, impeding the optimal flow of energy throughout the body. Through a physical practice like hatha yoga or Qi Gong, we’re trying to untie and release these knots, allowing energy to flow more freely in the body-mind and for afflictive emotions (excessive desires, anger and hatred, ignorance, pride, jealousy) to be released. This is why Tantric and Taoist traditions view physical practices such as yoga and Qi Gong as essential for both physical healing and spiritual awakening.
How does the subtle body relate to modern science?
Many of these concepts about the subtle body can align with modern scientific concepts. The nervous system is certainly a key component of the subtle body, if not entirely analogous to it. Research on trauma has now confirmed the ways in which trauma gets stored in the body. I have heard my own teacher in Vajrayana (Tibetan Buddhism), Tsoknyi Rinpoche make similar comparisons.
On a retreat I attended, Rinpoche noted that we might think of bindu (drops of energy that flow through these energy channels) as neurotransmitters like dopamine. While the maps from the subtle body and modern science align in many ways, there is no need for them to perfectly match up or for one to justify the veracity of another, for there is a crucial distinction in how we approach truth in a 3rd person, objective sense of science vs the first person, subjective sense of consciousness.
Consciousness is a fundamentally subjective experience. Thus, teachings such as the subtle body are useful in so far as they help to recognize truths about our direct experience that are true experientially, not objectively.
To state the obvious, we are not going to cut open a corpse and find nadis, charkras or meridians, as we find in these subtle body maps from Tantra or Taoism. This fact in no way diminishes the value of the subtle body maps for navigating our subjective experience. These maps are very helpful in explaining spiritual awakening and how plant medicines affect the body and mind. They are part of a larger set of teachings and practices.
The Tantric yogis in India and Taoist sages in China understood the value of these maps through rigorously honing the microscope of the mind and turning this attention inward to investigate their own subjective experience. Even if these contemplatives lacked the precision of the tools of modern science in measuring 3rd person, objective truths, for example about the brain, their methods and frameworks still hold incredible value in describing the subjective experience of understanding consciousness.
What these yogis and contemplatives understood is that opening these energy channels in the body is vital for optimizing physical health and well being, as well as an incredibly useful way to facilitate the process of spiritual awakening. Though the teachings on the subtle body can be very complex, let’s begin with this basic understand to explore how plant medicines such as Ayahuasca and Soma facilitate a process of emotional healing and spiritual awakening.
How do plant medicines like Soma & Ayahuasca relate to the subtle body?
There are two plants that comprise each of these brews, Ayahuasca and Soma. One plant contains a DMT source (Chacruna, certain forms of Acacia) and the other plant contains the beta carbolines harmine and harmaline (Peganama Harmala in Soma, the Banisterios Cappi vine in Ayahuasca). These beta carbolines have potent MAOI properties that allow for DMT to become orally active.
People sometimes speak of these beta carbolines as if their only function is to make the DMT active. However, indigenous cultures often emphasized that the Ayahuasca vine (banisterrios cappi) is the really critical component in the medicinal value of Ayahuasca. Through studying with my own plant medicine facilitator and mentor, I learned a similar truth, though he emphasized the equal importance of each plant (the beta carbolines and the DMT).
Drawing on our map of the subtle body, what these beta carbolines do is to open the energy channels in the body. The beta carbolines open these channels and play a critical role in cutting through the karmic knots. However, it is the synergy of these two plants that are critical. As the beta carbolines open the channels, the intelligence of the DMT can flow through these channels.
It is the combination of this cutting through power of the beta carbolines and the intelligence of the DMT that unties these karmic knots (psychological imprints, habitual patterns) and release these them into our awareness.
You can read a more detailed post on this process outlining the relationship between the two plants with Soma and Ayahuasca in this post: “Peganam Harmala: Creating the Space which Chacruna Illuminates.”
Visions can take form during our journey. But what happens in the days after is that these karmic visions come to the surface of our minds. The more medicine that we do, the more intense the release of these karmic visions can be.
People who have tried Ayahuasca or Soma often feel a strong sense of purpose or conviction. People who have tried Ayahuasca or Soma often feel a strong sense of purpose or conviction. This can lead them to make significant life changes.
For example, they may feel compelled to start a business. Or end a relationship. They might even create a shrine to the Sun Goddess in the jungle. Maybe, but usually it’s wise to give it several weeks before acting on any of these thoughts, especially if they involve any big decisions.
Do psychedelic plant medicines have a shadow side?
I have personally seen how psychedelics can make people feel overly confident or have unrealistic thoughts. Psychedelics make the appearances in the mirror of the mind very vivid. When things seem so real, it’s easier to get deluded.
This effect is strong with Aya and Soma because it clears energy channels linked to beta carbolines, making it powerful. These medicines have a dark side, but they are powerful and effective at removing our emotional barriers.
As my Shakta Tantra teacher Douglas Brooks would say: “The greater the light, the longer the shadow.” We can access the wisdom and intelligence of these medicines by learning to work with our shadow. This can help enhance our subtle body and awaken our hearts.
How can I navigate some of the dark sides of plant medicine?
To stay grounded, it's important to practice meditation. It's also crucial to have a clear understanding of The View from nondual Tantric traditions in Buddhism or Hinduism. For example, when we understand that there is an amplification of karmic visions in the days and weeks following our medicine journeys, then we can exercise more discernment about our choices.
This stirring up of psychological patterns can be a great time to speak with close and trusted friends, consult with a therapist or spiritual mentor, meditation teacher or psychedelic integration coach.
It’s also wonderful to balance some of this processing in social settings with some time spent in silence: walking in nature, sitting in meditation, journaling or forms of creative writing such as poetry or creating art.
It’s nice to balance both stillness and movement, in particular yoga, Qi Gong, dance—movements that keep the channels open and energy flowing through. Then spend some time sitting in silence to allow things to settle.
The medicine helps to clear and calm our body, heart, and mind when used with yoga and meditation. This can help us feel more grounded, open-hearted, and clear-minded, as my teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche says. In my view this is the purpose of a plant medicine path: to cultivate a grounded body, an open heart and a clear mind.
This invites us to dance with the paradox of awakening. Practicing virtues such as patience, perseverance, love, kindness, and compassion requires effort.
This effort should be directed towards ourselves, others, and the planet. It is important to approach this practice with a relaxed attitude. It's important to approach this with a relaxed attitude.
Yet the other side of the coin is that the view, the meditation and the medicine are simply allowing us to recognize what we already are: a Buddha. Our true nature is always and already awake. It can not be improved upon.
Like a diamond covered with dust, the pristine nature of pure awareness is covered over by our afflictive emotions (attachments, greed, ignorance, pride, jealousy). All of this dust in the mirror, our grasping and aversions, is what keep us feeling like a small and separate self. This is the source of so much of our suffering.
How do the spiritual path and plant medicine relate to each other?
A spiritual path is about learning to lift this veil that obstructs our view from recognizing our own true nature as always and already awake.
When the mirror recognizes its own nature as always and already perfect, in spite of whatever dust and limitations cover its surface, we recognize not simply intellectually but through direct experience that this mystery that you call you is already whole and complete.
Instead of grasping after extrinsic sources that can’t offer truly fulfilling and sustainable sources of happiness and love, we can rest in the Great Connection that comes from waking up to our interconnectedness with all of life: intimacy with the beauty and impermanence of existence, dancing all around us, the universe taking form as us before we too dissolve back into the elements.
What is the universe but a never ending process of creating and destruction? You are an expression of That. The precious gift of this life is to briefly become a wave in the ocean before dissolving completely back into the ocean.
Plant medicines such as Ayahuasca and Soma are potent accelerators along a spiritual path. However, if we don’t have a clear map and set of practices to navigate the territory, it is easy to get lost in the thicket of our karmic visions. Yet once we are equipped with the view and as we develop contemplative competency, plant medicines can bring us deeper not into delusion but towards freedom and connection.
If you do find yourself caught in delusion, don’t fret, for this too is part of the path. Come back to The View, which will be outlined in subsequent posts but is always about these basic metaphors: the mind as a mirror, as the sky, as the lake reflecting images in it (i.e. the moon), or the paradigm of Shiva and Shakti drawn from Hindu Tantra.
Build relationships with both fellow journeyers and guides from whom you can invite honest and open feedback. Center your intention, to awaken your heart for the benefit of all sentient beings.
Living quietly and doing small acts of kindness can have a significant influence. Living quietly and doing small acts of kindness can make a significant impact. By opening your heart and being compassionate in your daily interactions, you can spread positivity to others. This can also lead to increased happiness and well-being for yourself.
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