In a revealing conversation on the Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ welcomes Doron Yitzchak Gibor — a coach and spiritual practitioner — to explore how the sacred brew of ayahuasca can serve not only as a healing tool, but as a portal to deep inner work: confronting the “shadow self,” uncovering unconscious patterns, and transforming internal blockages into clarity and growth.
From Patterns to Purpose: Doron’s Journey
Doron shares how he discovered ayahuasca while living in South Africa, in a community where alternative healing and traditional medicine coexisted. Initially skeptical, he eventually surrendered to curiosity — especially after noticing recurring patterns in his life. “If something happens three or four times, and the only common denominator is you, that’s a signal,” he reflects.
His first ceremony was not filled with dramatic visions or purges, but with raw emotional clarity: for hours he cried, felt, and confronted old pain. The experience dissolved a longstanding blockage in a family relationship and unlocked a shift in his perspective. Shortly afterward, events in his life aligned with uncanny synchronicity: a broken car finally got fixed, and he found himself enrolling easily in a psychology degree after having abandoned a business path. For him, the medicine opened doors, but what followed was the deeper work of understanding and growth.
What Is Shadow Work — And Why It Matters
During the conversation, Doron outlines what “shadow work” actually means: every human psyche carries a polarity — light and dark. We often project our darker traits — shame, self-doubt, unconscious beliefs, reactivity — into “others,” while identifying with the “light” self. Over time, this disowned “shadow” shapes our choices, conflicts, and emotional suffering.
Shadow work is the process of bringing those hidden parts into awareness. It’s about owning the aspects of oneself we prefer to deny: anger, fear, limiting beliefs, emotional wounds, repeated patterns. Without that awareness, those unconscious parts keep running the show. Doron argues that many traumas, addictions, chronic relationship struggles, financial blockages or self-sabotage stem from an unintegrated shadow — and that simply “thinking positive” won’t shift what lives below the surface.
Ayahuasca as Portal — Shadow Work as Practice
Where traditional therapies or self-help often skirt around root causes, ayahuasca can accelerate the process. Doron describes how, under the medicine, suppressed memories, emotions, and energetic blockages can surface. The brew doesn’t just offer visions — it can pull hidden content out from the unconscious and make it felt in the body and psyche.
That said, the medicine isn’t magic on its own. According to Doron, ayahuasca can act as a catalyst — a “portal” — but what you do after matters even more. He emphasizes a structured path: first healing, then growth, and only then deeper transformation or “downloads” of insight. In his own life, after multiple ceremonies he moved from purging and release into states of meditative clarity, where he received a coherent inner framework — what he calls his “breakthrough matrix” — combining psychological insight, energetic awareness, and spiritual growth into a usable methodology.
For him, the combination of shadow-work practice + medicine + integration becomes a powerful engine for transformation. The medicine opens the unseen, shadow work gives it form and context, and integration roots the change in daily life.
Healing, Then Enlightenment — A Two-Phase Paradigm
Doron outlines a two-phase model:
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Healing Phase: Focused on the past — on uncovering, confronting, and releasing trauma, emotional baggage, guilt, shame, and unconscious patterns. This work can be messy, painful, uncomfortable — but necessary.
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Enlightenment / Growth Phase: Once the core wounds are addressed, there emerges spaciousness. From this place of inner peace and balance, deeper clarity arises — new insights, new understanding of self and reality, a restructured internal map.
According to him, many seekers try to jump directly to enlightenment — new insights, “downloads,” expansions — without doing the foundational healing. That often leads to instability. The medicine may show you the path, but without dealing with shadows, there’s nowhere solid to stand.
Integration, Intention & Readiness
A central theme: readiness matters. Doron stresses that entering ceremony must be a conscious, intentional decision — not a reaction to crisis, not a whim, but a grounded choice. The path requires preparation: clean diet, mental stability, clarity of purpose. He warns against romanticizing the medicine as an easy fix or spiritual shortcut.
Similarly, integration after the medicine is essential. The inner shifts that happen under ayahuasca must be anchored in everyday life — through honest self-reflection, changed behavior, lifestyle adjustments, and sometimes professional shadow-work or coaching. Without integration, insights fade; old patterns often reassert themselves.
He also reminds facilitators and seekers that a safe space and ethical framework matter: proper guidance, respect for the medicine’s power, and understanding that difficult emotions may surface — and that’s part of the work, not a sign something went wrong.
From Healing to Helping Others
For Doron, the process didn’t end after personal healing. His breakthroughs led him to develop and teach what he calls a “breakthrough matrix” — a structured methodology for shadow work, personal growth, and transformation. Over years he’s helped many people (in retreats and coaching) integrate these practices, translate psychedelic experiences into everyday transformation, and use them as tools to break unconscious blockages — in health, relationships, finances, and purpose.
His work demonstrates that with integrity, structure, and dedication, ayahuasca and shadow work can create lasting transformation — not just psychological release, but meaningful growth, empowerment, and increased self-mastery.
A Humble Invitation — But a Serious Path
Doron closes with a humble, grounded invitation: don’t rush into this work. Shadow work and ayahuasca aren’t party tools or quick escapes — they’re serious, life-changing practices. They demand readiness, willingness to face pain, honesty with oneself, and deep integration.
If you feel drawn: take the time to prepare. Clear your body and mind. Set your intention. Respect the medicine. Be ready to meet what you’re running from — and open to the possibility that growth may come not all at once, but slowly, over time.
Because real healing isn’t about feeling good in a moment — it’s about becoming whole over a lifetime. Shadow work may be confronting, ayahuasca may be intense — but together, when held with care, they can become a path not just to healing, but to self-mastery, clarity, and inner freedom.
Based on the Ayahuasca Podcast episode “Shadow work and Ayahuasca as a tool for learning” with Sam Believ and Doron.
Sam Believ is the founder and CEO of LaWayra Ayahuasca Retreat, the best-rated Ayahuasca retreat in South America, with over 520 five-star Google reviews and an overall rating of 5 stars. After his life was transformed by Ayahuasca, he dedicated himself to spreading awareness about this ancestral medicine to help address the mental health crisis. Sam is committed to making Ayahuasca retreats affordable, accessible, and authentic, with a focus on care, integration, and the involvement of indigenous shamans. He is also the host of the Ayahuasca Podcast.
