Walking into an ayahuasca ceremony without preparation is like showing up to a marathon without training – it can feel overwhelming, disorienting, or even harmful. In a grounded and insightful conversation, host Sam Believ and guest Derek Dodds break down what real preparation for an ayahuasca retreat actually looks like: not just logistics, but mindset, body, emotion, and intention.
Why Preparation Matters
Ayahuasca is often framed in spiritual, mystical, or even romantic language – visions, healing miracles, spiritual breakthroughs. But Derek emphasizes that without proper preparation, the experience can become chaotic, confusing, or emotionally destabilizing. Preparation doesn’t guarantee a certain outcome, but it creates safety, clarity, receptivity, and integrity.
You wouldn’t jump into a deep conversation with a lifelong friend without mental readiness. Similarly, you wouldn’t walk into a powerful plant medicine experience without readiness of body and mind. Preparation sets the stage for deeper insight, more meaningful integration afterward, and fewer surprises you aren’t ready to handle.
The Body: Clean Vessel, Clearer Experience
One of the first areas of focus Derek highlights is the body. A retreat is not just psychological or spiritual – it is physical. Ayahuasca works on the nervous system, the gut, the heart, and the immune system. Preparing your body helps the medicine work with you instead of against you.
Key physical preparation includes:
Diet cleansing: Reducing or eliminating processed foods, sugars, caffeine, alcohol, and heavy meats – ideally weeks before the retreat.
Hydration and nutrients: Drinking clean water, eating fresh plant-based foods, and supporting gut health.
Avoiding contraindicated substances: Some herbs, medications, and supplements interact with ayahuasca’s chemistry, so a clear lab of substances helps emotional and physical clarity.
Gentle movement: Walking, stretching, yoga – these help regulate energy, improve circulation, and prepare the nervous system for the energetic work ahead.
Derek explains that when your body is less “cluttered,” you’re less likely to be caught up in discomfort, nausea, or confusion – and more able to face whatever arises.
The Mind: Set Your Intention
Mindset before the retreat is just as critical. Derek makes a distinction between expectation and intention. Expectation is a rigid story about how the experience “should be,” while intention is a clear and flexible desire for why you are choosing the retreat.
He encourages participants to ask themselves:
Why am I really here?
Am I ready to face uncomfortable truths?
Am I willing to let go of attachment to a specific outcome?
Do I want insight, healing, growth, or transformation?
Derek points out that the more honest and clear your intention is, the more the experience can be oriented in a productive direction — rather than being hijacked by fear, fantasy, or avoidance.
The Heart: Emotional Readiness
Preparation isn’t just diet and intention – it’s emotional. Many people arrive with avoidance strategies: numbing, denial, intellectualizing, self-protection. Ayahuasca doesn’t necessarily remove defenses by force, but it illuminates them. If you haven’t begun to face your inner landscape before the retreat, the plant might push you directly into places you aren’t ready to witness.
Derek encourages participants to begin emotional preparation weeks in advance:
Journaling about fears, hopes and wounds
Practicing vulnerability with trusted people
Engaging in therapy or emotional work
Learning to sit with discomfort rather than avoiding it
This internal readiness reduces shock, and allows insight to be integrated rather than resisted.
The Social Field: Relationships and Support
Ayahuasca retreats are powerful partly because they disconnect you from daily life and reconnect you to inner life. Derek notes that preparing your social field – telling loved ones, arranging support afterward, clarifying boundaries – makes reintegration smoother.
You don’t want to return from a deep ritual and immediately be pulled into misunderstandings, chaos, or emotional reckoning without support. Preparation includes:
Communicating with close friends/family
Arranging time and space after the retreat to rest
Ensuring emotional support systems are available afterward
This creates a field where the insights from the medicine can be reflected, not buried.
Ritual Readiness: Respect, Ceremony, and Humility
Derek also stresses the ceremonial aspect: ayahuasca is not a recreational psychedelic. It is medicine, and approaching it with reverence makes a significant difference. Ritual readiness includes:
Understanding the cultural roots and respecting traditions
Being prepared for purification – both physical and psychological
Knowing the expectations of ceremonial behavior (silence, humility, receptivity)
Being ready to follow the guidance of experienced facilitators
This humility shifts the posture from “I am trying something new” to “I am entering a sacred space.”
Integration Begins Before the Ceremony
One of the most important lessons Derek shares is that integration begins before the retreat. It’s a mistake to think the ceremony is where healing starts — real healing often begins when you prepare yourself ahead of time. That early work smooths the path for deeper insight, reduces resistance, and makes the medicine’s gift more accessible.
For example, when someone begins emotional exploration or lifestyle adjustments before the retreat, they often avoid panic or defense once the plant medicine begins to show inner content. Integration, in this sense, is not just post-retreat journaling or therapy – it’s a continuum that starts weeks before arrival.
A Balanced and Grounded Approach
Throughout the conversation, Derek emphasizes a balanced approach: ayahuasca is not a magic bullet, and preparation is not about making the experience “easy” – it’s about making the experience safe, honest, and meaningful. Real preparation honors body, mind, heart, and social context – and meets the medicine with respect rather than expectation.
He dismantles the idea that you can just “show up and drink” and hope for transformation. Instead, he offers a roadmap: prepare the vessel, clarify your intention, cultivate emotional capacity, and build a supportive context. When preparation is taken seriously, the retreat becomes not a wild ride, but a powerful opportunity for deep transformation.
Final Reflection
If you’re considering an ayahuasca retreat, take preparation as seriously as the ceremony itself. The weeks before are not a warm-up – they are the foundation. Care for your body, refine your intentions, invite emotional honesty, support your social field, and approach the medicine with humility. Then, when you step into the ceremonial space, the medicine can meet you where you are – grounded, ready, and open.
Based on the Ayahuasca Podcast episode “Preparation for Ayahuasca Retreat” with Sam Believ and Derek Dodds.
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.