In this episode of AyahuascaPodcast.com host Sam Believ has a conversation with Ashley Townsend on the topics of can bling people see psychedelic visions, are visions important, her personal work with Psychedelics and overcoming trauma with men.
If you want to reach out to Ashley via WhatsApp this is her number
+1 (386) 871-4016
Transcript
Sam Believ: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com.
Hi guys, in this episode of ayahuasca podcast.com. We speak to Ashley Townsend, who is a blind person that came and stayed in Lara for 10 days. We talk about her experience. We talk about what do blind people see on Ayahuasca. We talk about importance of visions versus other psychedelic experiences.
We talk about her personal work as a psychotherapist and her healing process with her trauma with men that she experienced during this retreat. I’m sure you will enjoy this episode. Ashley just did a. 10 day retreat with us here at LoRa. What’s different about Ashley is that Ashley is visually impaired.
Ashley Townsend: I’m blind.
Sam Believ: Blind. I’m
Ashley Townsend: a lot closer to blind than visually impaired these days. Okay.
Sam Believ: It’s I’m still learning this terminology, but first of all, Ashley, welcome to the podcast.
Ashley Townsend: Thank you. Yeah. It’s awesome to be here, Sam.
Sam Believ: Ashley is a fascinating person in my opinion, because she’s blind. She can’t really see much.
She walks with a stick. However, she was brave enough to counter the retreat in a foreign country navigate her way here. I know you’re a psychotherapist.
Ashley Townsend: Yes.
Sam Believ: So you actively work and you have a complete life and nothing seems to stop you. First question actually. What brought you to Ayahuasca?
Ashley Townsend: Yeah, great question. So I came here with my fiance, Matt, and we’ve been together about four years now. When we first met Matt had actually recently done ayahuasca at So Quest in Florida. And so we had talked about it for years and I thought it was really fascinating. I wasn’t ready to jump into the deep end and do it, but I was very interested in it.
And I would say somewhere in 2023, something just clicked for me and I was like, you know what? I’m ready. I really wanna take my own healing journey to a different level. And I wanted that to be in a more embodied sense. I love being a talk therapist and. At the same time I think that Ayahuasca and Plant Medicine has this incredible power to help us tap into our own answers and our own strength.
And just this deep well of love that is who we really are. And I think talk therapy helps you. Helps you move things for sure. And I had to do a lot of my own therapeutic work with my therapist, who’s amazing, shout out to her to get to a point where this felt safe for me and where it felt like it was the right time.
So this was definitely the right time, and I can’t wait to come back and see you guys again.
Sam Believ: As a therapist, Ashley, you listen to a lot of people and you collect a lot of pain this way. Would you say ayahuasca helped you to release that or do you carry some of that or not?
Ashley Townsend: One of the most challenging things I think about being a psychotherapist is figuring out how do you filter. All of the things that you hear like I obviously want to remember people’s stories and really be with them in that journey. I also I don’t want to feel like a sponge that needs to be rung out.
So it’s that balance of, you don’t wanna get away from being empathetic because you filter too much but you also don’t wanna hold people’s trauma because holding, you can’t really hold someone’s trauma for them. It’s in them. So one of the biggest takeaways I had was in my second ceremony, I was having the hardest time.
On my first cup, and I was also up in the gazebo more away from the group because I was menstruating. And so there was this feeling of isolation and I was struggling to connect to myself and the medicine and I really wanted to sleep, but I was really disappointed in myself for being so tired.
And I had a lot of physical pain coming up. And then I had this huge realization going into the second cup that, I have struggled with sleep so much ever since my brother was deployed, and that’s not blaming it on him, it’s just a thing that I experienced. And then I felt this really deep sense of connection to my brother and everything that he’s been through in life and in being deployed in Iraq.
And the medicine said, you need to hold your brother, not his trauma. And it said that he holds his trauma and he’s gonna work through it in his own way. On his own time. And that I just need to go to him and be available and be loving. And that was so freeing. It simplified something that felt so stuck.
I think a lot of times in families, we have a sense of each other’s pain, but we don’t know how to go to each other. And I think a lot of that stems from this confusion around I have to hold someone else’s pain and in truth, we need to just hold them.
Sam Believ: That’s a great revelation. Yeah, we cannot really.
Hold somebody else’s trauma. It’s theirs. To have an us holding it does not necessarily help them. It might actually make them feel worse, if it’s a close relationship. The question that I’m sure some of the listeners are asking themselves is you’re blind so you don’t see what does the blind and. And a lot of people focus on visions when it comes to ayahuasca. Very much. Yeah. A lot of people come here for visions. And so what does the blind person see in their visions? And a little spoiler for guys that you are having probably more visions than some of the other people in the group, right?
Ashley Townsend: I don’t know. So it I’ll say this. I wanna preface it with blind people are very different in that, some of us go blind earlier in life. Some of us go blind later in life. Some of us retain some amount of functional vision and are living more of that in-between life, where you can rely to some degree on your functional vision and rely to some degree on your blind skills.
So I would be fascinated to get to connect with more blind folks who are getting to have this ayahuasca journey. I would love to encourage other blind and visually impaired people to come specifically to LoRa. And that is because I had such a safe experience here in every sense of the word around just being blind and doing this.
It was a safe experience around. All of my trauma, and it was really healthy for me to have this mix of moving around independently and then also knowing that it was okay to accept help. People are also at different points with accepting, being visually impaired or blind, and all of that is valid too.
I really, at this point in my life. I’m 32, almost 33. I gradually lost my vision all the way up to the age of 27. And now I just have light perception. So I’m in a really pretty comfortable place with my blindness. And there are some people who wanna regain sight, and that’s totally valid. I just don’t fall in that camp.
Personally, so I would be fascinated to know how other people experience it. But getting back to your question, Sam, we say bu pinta, which is like an English saying like good patterns, right? Like Pinta is to paint or Pinta is to paint. And so originally people you would get through the first couple ceremonies and we would have a word circle and people would describe seeing these beautiful geometric patterns and colors.
And I didn’t experience that in the first couple of ceremonies. What I did experience was ayahuasca. In my first ceremony, she spoke to me very much like my paternal grandmother, my Grandma Townsend, and I call her mama because she just talks like mama to me and my grandma Townsend was a mama and.
She talked to me the whole time, very gently, and she would ask me questions, a really good psychotherapist and just have a dialogue with me the entire time. It was beautiful. And then, the ceremonies vary and some of them feel more painful at points are dark and then you get realizations out of it.
Then I got to my fourth, fifth, and sixth ceremony. So the last three got a lot more visually. Imaginative and expansive, which was interesting for me ’cause I don’t have visuals that have a lot of like acuity and detail to them, like how people were describing these like geometric patterns. What I have is like lights.
So I had this really powerful experience in my fourth ceremony, reconnecting to music and the music within me and how I’ve really let that go In the interest of. Being a psychotherapist for the past like 10, 12 years. And so as I’m listening to Titha and the band playing music, I just had these waves of rainbow lights that I could physically feel and I could visually see.
It was almost like. Like when I looked at the fire, ’cause I can see the fire in a sense because it’s a light. It was like, there was like rainbow smoke blowing outta the fire and the band was surrounded by this rainbow bubble. And I felt like I was in it with them. It was also a very physical feeling.
Other visions I had were of speaking to some of my relatives who have passed away and seeing them. It’s a very like di de los Muertos kind of image, but seeing them in a, like a castle that was a cloud in the sky and they were like neon skeletons dancing. And then mama told me that sometimes people dance for seven years in between incarnations.
I thought that was such an oddly interesting, specific thing that she said. And then I saw my paternal grandfather. As a white cloud dragon breathing, rainbow fire. And then a lot of the other stuff was very conversational. Like the conversations were honestly, in many ways the most powerful for me.
Just the way she speaks to me and the way I get to speak to her. And the, you start to realize that you are the medicine. That was more powerful for me than anything else is yes, this is coming from her, this is coming from spirit and it’s also very much coming from me. And that, that unity that you feel internally is just, I think it’s the most beautiful thing people will talk a lot about.
They can’t decide to keep their eyes open or to keep their eyes closed. Originally, I couldn’t open my eyes if I wanted to. And then in later ceremonies, I found myself opening my eyes more. Not so much for the visual stimuli, but just because it felt safe to open my eyes when Taito was in front of me. I used to feel like it was like disrespectful to try to open my eyes and look at him in the way that I look at people, and then towards the end, that was something I felt really compelled to do. It was just, it was really beautiful. To you get a sense that like it’s a visual experience for people who can see, but it’s also very much not because it’s so internal, and because you’re connecting so deeply with yourself.
Sam Believ: Yeah. People that come here to Lara, a lot of them are very obsessed about vision specifically. And we tried to talk them out of it to not focus on that, because I do agree with you. It’s the conversations and this intricate dance between medicine, you, yourself, and the group and the healing that happens.
And visions are nice, but they’re not always the most significant part of it. But of course with you, we focus on visions because just so curious to know what and, I noticed in the group and the sharing circles, I noticed that you probably had more visions than other people and that that’s really fascinating.
Oh, I
Ashley Townsend: wasn’t asking for it. I think that has a big role in it. Maybe I’m not saying this is what I need, this is how it has to come. I was really trying to work on, my biggest overarching intention in coming here is surrender, which is very hard for me, and I was really trying to work on however it comes.
And just allowing that. I had another vision at the very end when we did our closing ceremony. The drums come in and Titha is going around and cleansing everyone and blessing everyone. And I had this vision of my old drum instructor, Baba Hamza, who’s a beautiful man who I got to study with in college and studying like West African drumming.
And he was a king in the sky. And he had like beautiful white and gold robes and he’s playing this huge gold drum. And mama said this is the image of his eternal spirit. So whatever incarnations he’s in, they might look different. He might do different things in that life. And that ultimately that was the image of his eternal spirit.
And I thought that was so beautiful and it was less about the image and more about learning about. We don’t really die. We have an eternal spirit.
Sam Believ: Interesting. What you mentioned about eyes closed and eyes open, they, it reminded me, my, my first ever, I ask experience one of the, one of the moments I was lying with my eyes.
And for some reason when the shaman would go through the space, I could know where he is. Yes. In this mental vision. Like I was almost sure that, and he was displayed as like a. Like a bubble of light, kinda similar to the visions you described. So it’s it’s curious in a way if there is some other kind of vision that can be unlocked through psychedelics that can actually allow you to see the space without your eyes.
I’ve heard about it being mentioned somewhere. Do you, have you experienced that or do you believe in that? Yeah,
Ashley Townsend: absolutely. I believe that. And so for me. I’m a mixed bag because I have visual memory growing up as a child with some vision. So I imagine that probably plays a little bit of a role for me.
I also think it’s very possible that people who are born blind from birth. Would experience that as well. Because I think it unlocks a lot of things that we can’t explain. So even people who have never even been able to perceive light, I think it’s very possible that they would have a different sensory perception or maybe even see like lights behind their eyes.
So much of vision is not in the actual eyeball, it’s in the mind. And vision’s a very different word than sight. Sight is very much about looking around and what you can see. Vision, I think, is a more integrated word that that really shows that you are able to look inward and that’s so much more than sight, and I think that’s why we’re here. We’re not just here to look around and go, oh, Columbia’s beautiful. Look at that bird. That’s great if you can do that. And if that helps you. But that’s not really why we’re here, whether you can see or not.
Sam Believ: And psychedelically speaking even visions, that’s also not the main goal.
I also remember seeing the music, so I think it’s called what’s it called for it? Synesthesia. Synesthesia, yeah. Do the, like bright lights and stuff. I could see the music and as the music was dancing and the. The rhythms. I could also see the visions that I had react to that music.
It’s kinda I dunno if you’ve ever seen it. If you, if you’re able to see still back then, but in the old, like Windows 98 music player, there was this it would, whatever you’re listening, it would automatically create this dancing pattern and it would dance. I do remember that.
Yeah. So this was similar to me on, on, on my first experience, but it was much more than that because the complexity, comparing it to the, the pattern on the computer screen is it’s 1% of that there, it’s much more complex than it. You can almost taste the music.
It’s like all the senses mix in. Yeah. And I think also there, there’s this condition, I think it’s called aphasia athia. It’s like, when. People they can see visually, but they cannot see in their mind’s eye. So let’s say if you would tell yourself envision a green car, then in, in your mind’s eye you’re envisioning green car of whatever, and there are people who cannot do that.
Ashley Townsend: Yeah. They have to actually see it in real life to see it. Yeah. Yeah.
Sam Believ: So a couple people like this came here because apparently there is some studies that ayahuasca can help unlock that ability. I know where I’m going with that, but it’s fascinating, this whole mental eye vision, seeing stuff you shouldn’t be able to see and then, the brain is so fascinating, like where it happens and how it happens.
No idea. Yeah. Do you, is there anything you know about that?
Ashley Townsend: I don’t know a ton about that. But it makes a lot of sense. A lot of us are. So we say we have five senses. We have way more than five senses. And I think Ayahuasca also really touches on that because people will sit around in word circle and we will try to put words to some of the physical sensations.
That we experience. And it’s so hard to put into words. There were times where I felt like I, this is going to sound very disturbing, but it didn’t feel disturbing. I felt like I was burning alive inside. That sounds horrifying. It was very pleasant. And we talk about with ayahuasca, you can experience a death.
You don’t actually die, but it feels like you’re dying. And I felt. Like I was burning alive inside. And she told me, what if you just enjoy it? And I was like, what? And so I was like, okay, I’ll try to do that. And I did. And it was this weird like intense, icy hot feeling all through my body. And then.
Again, it was this dio de los Muertos kind of image where I felt myself turn into a skeleton, but not in a scary, creepy way. It was almost cute, if you’ve seen the movie Cocoa. And then she called me a pretty little skeleton and she said, I’m gonna bring you right back. And then she said, you’re such a beautiful baby.
And then I heard somebody else, one of the patients had a really strong experience. And she said, I feel like I’m reborn. Like I feel like I’m a little baby right now. I’m just a beautiful little baby. She said exactly what I had experienced days before. So it’s so interesting how like in the group you’ll experience all of these connections and how interwoven all of our experiences are.
Sam Believ: Speaking of the group you mentioned that you had trauma with men and how did this week tie into that?
Ashley Townsend: Yeah. It’s been remarkable. It’s been so healing. I was nervous at first at how many men there were. I was nervous at first, like coming into the retreat. I was really struggling with, that Tata.
Is a man, right? And that there’s a lot of men that are like leading this experience and like holding this safe space. And that was really hard for me to trust initially. And they say that the medicine starts working with you. As soon as you decide that you’re going to come to Ayahuasca, she starts working with you before you ever actually take it.
And I definitely experienced that ’cause I would have like really triggering stuff come up for me before I came to Columbia. And then I get here and I felt it move more and more every day. Guys where I was like, Ooh, that’s really intense jock energy and I’ve avoided that my whole life.
Men that I perceive as being more like intensely masculine or something. And that has lifted for me so much because everyone was able to be vulnerable. And like people have so many different sides and I know that boys and men are conditioned and really. Poisonous harmful ways, that we are keeping boys and men from feeling deeply and being human.
And so of course that has a lot of manifestations and a lot of those manifestations, of course they affect men and they also affect women and they affect people of all genders that had a lot of talks with mama about people of all genders and how. We are all a mix of energies. We put things in the binary of just men and women.
That’s not how everybody exists in this world. And I think that’s really important too. Like why are we all seeing rainbows if everything’s black and white, this or that? So I just felt a lot safer with everyone’s mix of energies, if that makes sense. Including that more masculine presenting mix that has been.
Really scary for me in light of my sexual trauma. And in light of just feeling like I couldn’t really have male friends or I couldn’t really connect with men in terms of dating for many years. That was awesome. And by the time I got to my last ceremony. I was just around all of the guys I wasn’t even trying to be.
And I felt very safe and held and protected and loved and there was just no sense of threat at all. And in my fourth ceremony, which was very much about the music, I was right in front of Tita and the band, and I was mesmerized. And it was this really deep spiritual healing that was going on, and it felt like the music was just in my body and in my spirit.
And I was crying so hard, but I was really joyful. It is the most intense joy I have ever felt in my life, and I had this epiphany. I was like, oh my God, I am literally being healed by men right now. And that was something I could only ever dream of, but never really believed that would be possible or that I would experience that in my life.
So just. I could not be more grateful for everybody here and for you, Sam and how gentle you are with everybody and how understanding you are and how you’ve really helped bring everybody together and really see that message that hurt people, and that we can forgive ourselves for that, and we can forgive each other and we can go out into the world and we can do things differently and we can help other people to do things differently.
Sam Believ: Thank you. Yeah, it’s a lot of women that come to the retreat they get surprised when they see men cry, when they see men share the pain. And this man trauma is a lot of times is being healed in women. And the women trauma a lot of times is being healed in men because it goes both ways.
Absolutely. We just hurt each other. I don’t know for what reason. But largely as a society. We all have preconception about who is who and what to expect from them, and we think we know who they are. And then when people come to the word circle and the retreat starts and people start sharing deeper and deeper every day, take off their masks, all of that goes away.
And then all you left with is you just realize. We’re all human and we all suffer in a very similar ways. And then I think it really helps to, to bond. And I think we need it in the society at large because we all think we know who’s what and we kinda have those prepared ways of judging them automatically.
And but the Ayahuasca definitely lifts off that veil and just shows you that. That we’re more similar than we would like to think.
Ashley Townsend: Yeah. And my experience of that was she’s very understanding of all the ways that you protect yourself. I would have moments where I felt really intensely angry and she would say, I understand.
I understand why. And just really safely would guide me through that. And help me arrive at a place where I could see that I could release that it was safe to release that. And there’s a lot of crying. There’s a lot of different types of purging that people experience so that they can get from one point to another.
But there were just things I thought I was always gonna need to move through this life as. If you look at my physical form, I am a tiny blind woman. And it’s not that I’m not still gonna be safety conscious because there are bad things in the world but I don’t carry it like this sense of hypervigilance and pain.
And that’s really new for me. And that’s a process and I’m gonna have to stay with that process. I’m just so grateful to be getting to such a different point.
Sam Believ: What would you, what would your message be to blind people interested in trying ayahuasca or psychedelics?
Ashley Townsend: Yeah. Blind people. All people have a lot of challenges in life and some of us have a lot of trauma.
So blind people are not just facing the trauma or the loss of losing their vision in a world that is very focused on site. They have all the other things that any other person can have too. They have family trauma. They, maybe were bullied. They we’re actually at a much higher risk for sexual abuse.
So yeah there’s the baggage around feeling like a burden. There’s ableism, there’s this belief that people tend to hold, whether they realize it or not, that people with disabilities are lesser or that their lives would be better or more valid or worth living. If they didn’t have that disability that weighs on your soul.
And so I would say, to, to blind and visually impaired people, whatever your reasons are for coming here. We’re all human beings and we all have very good reasons for coming here and. I would love to connect with people who are curious about it and just talk with them and hear where they’re coming from.
And yeah, I love that I can say to people like, beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lara is a really safe place and that, as a blinder, visually impaired person, you can ask for whatever you need here in terms of help or in terms of independence and how you wanna get around and navigate.
And you will get it. You’ll absolutely get it. So yeah, I, I don’t know if there’s a way for me to give out information or connect with people. Yeah. A
Sam Believ: hundred percent. Yeah. If you want people to reach out to you work and they find you,
Ashley Townsend: I guess WhatsApp would be a good one. I
Sam Believ: can just add your number in the show notes.
Ashley Townsend: That’s perfect. That would be great.
Sam Believ: Okay, Ashley, thank you so much for sharing. You do have great capacity to describe things in the words. And I’m fascinated by you. There’s there’s so many people that can see and can have all the senses and they don’t do much with their lives for some reason or another.
And definitely not seeing is not easy. I can imagine. However, you just. You’re productive, you’re successful, you’re positive. That’s amazing.
Ashley Townsend: Thanks. Yeah, that’s a big shout out to my mom and dad that they really encouraged that in me and they had the strength to not overprotect me. And I can understand that desire to overprotect your child, especially when they have a disability.
And that’s been very freeing for me. And I had a lot of. Connection to my parents around that and just feeling very proud and very grateful for everything they’ve done for me. So thank you so much for recognizing that, Sam.
Sam Believ: Thank you Mom and dad. Ashley’s mom and dad, if you’re listening, thank you.
Okay guys. You’ve been listening to ayahuasca podcast.com as always, with you, Sam, believe the host. And our guest today was Ashley Townsend.