In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with David Londoño.

David is a Colombian psychologist and researcher at ICEERS (International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, and Service). With over 20 years of experience, he focuses on the therapeutic use of Ayahuasca, safety protocols, and integration practices. David bridges Western psychology with traditional Amazonian wisdom, helping improve mental health outcomes in modern plant medicine contexts.

We touch upon topics of:

  • David’s personal journey into Ayahuasca and clinical psychology (01:11)
  • The therapeutic potential and risks of Ayahuasca (03:02)
  • The AyaSafety course and best practices (04:28)
  • How to properly prepare, serve, and integrate Ayahuasca (07:39)
  • Psychological screening and who should avoid the medicine (11:48)
  • What integration really means and why it matters (14:17)
  • Cultural differences: Colombian vs. Western attitudes (19:08)
  • Magical realism and the spiritual worldview of Colombia (25:18)
  • What “bad trips” really are and how to understand them (29:05)
  • Ayahuasca as a tool for depression, trauma, addiction, and grief (34:16)
  • Reconnecting with self, nature, and spirituality through Ayahuasca (38:07)

If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to http://www.lawayra.com

Find more about David Londoño by searching “David Londoño psychology” on Google to access his professional profiles and connect with his work.

Transcript

Sam Believ: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com.

David Londoño: People that live in the jungle try ayahuasca because they are having difficulties. They need to learn how to deal with the coldness of the night bear. Or they go and try ayahuasca because they lost some objects and they need to find the object. But when Western people drink ayahuasca we go with often with mental health difficulty.

No we go after a breakup. We go because we have depression, we have anxiety, we cannot sleep. Very different kind of participant. They have different kinds of intentions we can divide the world with in three different stages. The preparation for the ceremony, during the ceremony and after ceremony.

Thinking about the preparation of the ceremony, we think that in general it is necessary a help form to check if the person is ready in terms of physical health. And then we have the, during the ceremony, indigenous people teach that in order to. Facilitate properly. Ayahuasca a guide needs a long training.

It’s very hard to learn, takes a long time and requires very specific skills. It’s not based on only on good intention, but in developing certain strengths in the mind, in the body, in the field, spiritually. And then we have the, after the ceremony and after ceremony starts, what we can call the integration process, which means how to take what we receive.

To ceremony, how to apply that into our day-to-day life.

Sam Believ: Hi guys, and welcome to our podcast as always. Really the host, same of. Today I’m having a conversation with David Londono. David is a Colombian psychologist and a researcher at RCRs, the International Center for Athena Botanical Education, research and Service. He specializes in the psychological foundations of ayahuasca work with the focus on safety integration and therapeutic use.

David Bridges clinical insights with traditional Amazonian knowledge and brings a unique. Perspective informed by his Colombian roots, exploring themes like spiritual bypassing, trauma healing, and the cultural context of plant medicine. This episode is sponsored by Lara Ayahuasca Retreat. At Lara, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity.

Yra connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you, David. Welcome to the show.

David Londoño: Hello, Sam. Hello to everyone from is my pleasure to be here and thank you for the invitation. It’s good to be here.

Sam Believ: You’re welcome. David tell us a little bit about your story. Your growing up in Columbia and how, what brought you to work with with the Oscar and with I Sears?

David Londoño: Yeah, it is, a long story. It started more than 20 years ago. I was living in Colombia and I was studying psychology. And while I was studying psychology, I started to assist to ceremonies. Ceremonies in my country, no. And lead by indigenous people. And I became really interested in the potential of ayahuasca for healing, for personal growth, and for spiritual openness.

And I saw a lot of very very therapeutic powerful and very fascinating. Processes around ayahuasca. I started to became really interested while I was very young. And after finishing my studies in psychology, I traveled to Argentina and I started to work there with I Wask guide helping him.

And while I was in Argentina someone told me, if you really want to learn more about. To work with plant Mac, you need to go to a source, you need to go to a jungle, you need to move to a jungle. And I thought that it was a good advice and I moved to Peru, to a place in Peru and Amazon that is called Terra.

I started to work there in a retreat center as a therapist and helping people with their integration and studying there with in the area with different traditional healers. While I was there I was still amazed about the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca, but I also started to realize that more or less often people get harm too, and people develop different kind of difficulties.

Some people develop psychological problems. Some people have physical problems. Some have, some people have energetical problems. And it was really sad because people went there to receive healing, but ended receiving some sort of harm. So I started to pay a lot of attention to safety and to integration, and I realized that in order to promote safety and wellbeing for non-indigenous people, tr trying ayahuasca.

It is necessary to consider other kind of framework, eh, or approach and that regard psychology and psychotherapy has a lot to, to offer. So I start to to be very interested in this bridge between psychology, psychotherapy and medicine. And after six years there, I joined ICE E and India, ice EI work with Za and we.

Studied a lot safety and a lot ethics regarding AYA use in non-native context. And we talk with scientists, with psychiatrists, with psychologists, with facilitators, with guys, with retreat centers in order to learn more what are the best practice to promote safety and health and good integration of this kind of work for western people.

And we started to offer a course on re that is called I Safety, a course directed to Toward Ayahuasca Diets. And I’m, after 20 years, I’m still very interested in this bridge between psychology, psychotherapy and plant, in particularly Ayahuasca, San Pedro and Amazonian nations. And yes, that’s, that is like the summary of it.

I work in the IS support center and we receive. Constantly consultation from different parts of the world, of people that have some sort of difficulty around plant medicine some sort of problem, some sort of conflict, some sort of confusion and so on and so forth. So we pay a lot of attention of to that, to these difficulties and to how to prevent them, how to work with them when they appear.

Sam Believ: I’m not Colombian. I’m originally from Latvia, but I live in Colombia. And I just like you, I also started my journey with the medicine here in Colombia. And my first ceremonies, they were, Colombian style ceremonies around big cities in Colombia, like around Bogota. It’s like a finca.

Their shaman comes and people come and it’s all kinda like last minute and you just come over, they give you a cup and you just bring your own mattress and then you share a bucket with someone and you figure out yourself so to style. So it was maybe not optimal from the point of view of how, for example, we do the ceremonies or how I think it should be done.

But I got lucky I wasn’t hurt by it. I was actually. Still healed and I had good result, but I’ve met so many Colombians that, and when I tell them what I do, they’re like no. It’s like this is dangerous. And they all have a story of some long, far away uncle who got psychosis. And so I think about it a lot.

And also think about, the dangers of it as well. And obviously. Here at Laro, we have had more than, several thousands of people. And the cases where people feel worse afterwards are extremely rare. I don’t know, I can only recall less than five people that felt destabilized.

And then with the hub they received, they got better than before. But is a very strong tool, and I believe that sometimes it’s just not done properly. And there’s definitely this part missing. The part that you’re studying the safety the preparation, the container, the integration.

So talk to us, how should it be done properly to make sure that people have predominantly positive experiences and productive experiences and not, the ones that make them feel worse afterwards.

David Londoño: This is a very important question and also very complex question. No because depend on the participant, depend on the context, be depend on the background of the participant.

Depend on the previous experience with the participant and so on and so forth. There are many different factors here, but in, in a general term, you can think about three different stages. And I’m talking about, I was in non-native context. No because native indigenous people. Know really well how to work with Ayahuasca in data in their context.

They are masters of it, and they have been working with ayahuasca for thousands of years. Eh, we have nothing but to learn from them. But in non-native context, like in cities and when the participant come from western cultures, different factors. On one hand because people that went there they don’t have the cultural knowledge and the cultural background in order to deal with altered state of consciousness and in order to deal with ayahuasca in order to deal with massive.

Contact with your own unconscious, sometimes with your own child, sometimes with your own pain, with your own suffering, with your own emotions that have that ha has been repressed for years. And suddenly to be in contact with all of that can be difficult and sometimes can be overwhelming.

And we also lack the foundation for the spiritual openness that often ayahuasca tend to create. And if you are there in the middle of ceremony and Sony, you are having visions of the spiritual world. That can be pretty and amazing. But for some people that can be also very scary. If you are, for instance having contacts with your, with the, with your ancestors or with people that already pass away for some people that can be really interesting, but for some people can be very difficult to handle.

No. And very different And our own day-to-day experience of life. No. So coming back to a original question, no. We can divide what we in three different stages? No, the preparation for the ceremony, during the ceremony and after ceremony. Thinking about the preparation of the ceremony we think that in general it is necessary a health form to check if the person is ready in terms of physical health.

If the. Blood pressure. If the heart rate, if the general sense of strength in the body, if the, general system of the body are working fine in order to have this generally strong experience that ACA represents and if there could be or not any kind of interaction with medication or it’s antidepressive.

For instance amazing for the blood pressure and so on and so forth, because ayahuasca is not for everyone. This is one, one thing that we need to take into account. Then we have something that we would con consider as a first interview because not only physically, but also psychologically.

Not for everyone and some people with what is calling psychology complex trauma. Some people with difficult issues around control, some people with difficulties in the relationship with reality, like for instance, in psychosis or in his schizophrenia or in borderline personality disorder are not.

The best candidates to drink ayahuasca. And if for those cases, ayahuasca can bring more danger and healing. And that’s something that is necessary to take into account, doing appropriately screening. And then we have the preparation, the intention, the diet and so on and so forth. And then we have the, during the ceremony and during the ceremony.

Indigenous people teach that in order to facilitate properly ayahuasca a guide needs a long training. It because it’s a very delicate process, eh, is very hard to learn, takes a long time, and requires very specific skills. It’s not based on only on good intentions, but in. In developing certain strengths in the mind, in the body, into an atic field spiritually too.

The guide that offer has to be extremely well prepared. And nowadays we are finding people that just learning two months or in three months and start to facilitate ceremonies. And that essentially represents a risk for the. And then we have the, after the ceremony and after ceremony, eh, starts what we can call the integration process, which means to, how to take what we receive in the ceremony and how to apply that into our day-to-day life.

How to take the insights to, to, to everyday lives. How to make sense of the visions, how to understood the dynamics that appear during the ceremony. How to deal with the messages that we received. With the lack of messages and all of that sometimes requires help and sometimes requires another person to help us to make sense of it and to avoid difficult and dangerous places and to make the most of it.

And that’s what we can call generality integration stage. So in, in the three stages, there are a lot of factors to take into account and it is a complex process, know how to guarantee really safety for a participant. And requires a lot of dedication from, for, from the people that organize the sessions.

And, coming back to an original question, the people that live in the jungle normally have different kinds of questions when they try and drink ayahuasca and all people that live in the jungle, for instance, try ayahuasca because they are having difficulties when they have to go at night to fish.

Something because it’s too cold. So they need to learn how to deal with the coldness of the neighbor, or they go and try air because they lost some objects and they need to find the object. What they deal with. They are dealing with companies that are extracting wood from their territories. And the questions are about how to deal with the companies that are extracting things.

Wood or the water or the oil. So they have different kinds of intentions. But when Western people drink Iowa we go with often with mental health difficulty. No we go after a breakup. We go, because we have depression, we have an anxiety, we cannot sleep. We have post-traumatic disorder.

We have, eh. Difficulties to finding a partner and so on and so forth. So it’s a very different participant and this other kind of participant requires no kind of integration process. And in regard, we need knowledge from integrational world, but we need also knowledge from our own culture in order to make the most of it and to guarantee as much.

Yeah,

Sam Believ: that’s a very good explanation. Thank you. The analogy I like to use is ayahuasca is a very strong tool. It’s a very powerful tool for mental health and for many other things. But if you think about tool, for example, if you take a hammer, you can take a hammer and you can use it to build a house, or you can take a hammer and you can kick.

Punch someone in the head and kill them. So the tool doesn’t change. What changes is the intention and the professionalism of the person that uses the tool. For example, somebody can hit their finger and, make it, make their nail blue because they don’t know how to use it. But somebody can make very nice things with that tool.

As I like to say is if you have a real medicine, real ayahuasca or jaha, if you have real shaman. From tradition, who knows exactly what he’s doing, who’s been trained, and then you follow all the instructions that the retreat provides you that talk about the things that you talked in preparation, then it’s it can be very life changing and very safe.

So it’s less about the tool, it’s more about how we use it. What I wanna talk to you about, because I don’t have that many Colombians coming to my retreat, I think I interviewed. Joe a writer. He’s Colombian, but he grew up in US and I interviewed my shaman we interviewed him. He’s he’s Colombian, but so it’s pretty rare.

And I want to talk to you about, how does it feel to be Colombian? Here if I’m not a Colombian, but I’m dealing with those cultural misconceptions every day. And working on slowly rebranding this country from drugs to medicines. How does it feel, you’re in Spain for example when you say you’re Colombian, do people always say, cocaine and Pablo Cobar, and like how does it feel?

How do you react to that? And the other part of this question is. Being a Colombian and growing up in this culture what have you observed as an attitude of people towards ayahuasca or jaha as it’s called here?

David Londoño: In for Colombian people? You mean, or Colombian? Yeah. Yeah.

It’s interesting. Yeah, indeed there are many prejudices around Colombia and people imagine. Some sort of territory full of coka and war and, narco traffic and a huge jungle and people, used using small boats in order to move from one river to to, to the next one.

And a very complicated place in terms of war and so on and so forth. But indeed, Columbus is a huge country. Yes, has jungle, but has many cities and many urban areas. The conflict around narco Traffic Center only in particular spots in the area. Many places in Colombia are, were very safe to visit.

So it is very sad, these spread that are still very installed in, in many different countries and colo is full of different treasures among them. Many different ethnic groups that are still alive and that keep taking care of their knowledge and their traditions and keep taking care of the earth and honoring their own cultures and fighting for survival in.

In one times. And what kind of attitude do I find in the people regarding ayahuasca and j? Normally there are 2, 2, 2 kinds of attitudes regarding plant in general. On one hand, we have the prejudice, people that believe that, this psycho is a psycho or it is some sort of drug that people try to avoid in themselves and to some sort of recreational consumption.

And that is dangerous and that is illegal and that we have to be very afraid of, these plans because can make us crazy and so on and so forth? No. And we have the other polarity and other polarity. I think that is almost as dangerous as the first one, which is these plans are the magical stuff, the magical one that, that are going to touch us and gonna fix everything.

So one night he’s going to fix our. Addiction or depression. Our existential crisis, our childhood wounds and we need used to go there and to drink taboo. And everything is going to be fixed from one night to a, to an to the next day. And if you check in your YouTube, there are many videos around how I was change my life in one day.

And it’s very popular among Hollywoods. Celebrities. And I think that is also problematic because it’s not true. Change requires a lot of work, long-term work and a lot of commitment and implies a lot of time often, and the good methods and often is not just about ayahuasca, but requires other kind of complementary approach.

It’s not a shortcut. I was, it’s not a shortcut. It’s can be in good hands with the proper facilitation, preparation, integration can be very powerful and can bring a lot of help. But it is not a shortcut. And we try, I was, has a, as a shortcut probably we are going to be disappointed.

So in terms of opinion, that’s what I find normally these extremes.

Sam Believ: Yeah, definitely. I’ve seen both myself, I’ve observed both sides myself and the difference I think here in Columbia as well is that this is a land where magic is pretty much still very alive. There is people actively use plants. The every market you go to, it has plants and it has.

The ambulance and chants and stuff like that. And it’s very, RIA is something that, people still talk about daily and, they say Columbia is a land of magical realism. I don’t know if you being Colombian how do you see it? Because, there’s songs like, it’s it’s a big part of the culture.

So just talk to us about that. I’m just curious to know. What how is it, being a Colombian and growing up in this culture, and then how does Ayahuasca play a part in all of that?

David Londoño: Yes. A, it’s an interesting question because yes, indeed in the cultural framework of, in general Latin America it is more or less common to.

To consider things as spirits and, energies and to understand that certain places are alive and that nature is sin synt and has consciousness and that the, our ancestors play an important role in our present lives. And that is possible to, possible and common to have certain relationship with the spiritual world.

And we, in Colombia, we grew having that as some sort of per granted experience. No, it is like what we can call normal, but it is true that from our perspectives and from people that. Born in our cultures, all of that seems like magic. So what we consider magic from the outside for traditionally oriented people is very regular part of life and the other way around.

That’s what I mentioned as a cultural container. No on the cultural framework. That give us a person some resources and some possibilities or some limitations. For instance I live in in, in Spain and in general in, in Europe, I can find Setan tendency to, but we can call nihilism No.

And to skepticism and to a very strong disconnection from NATO and from the spiritual world. So that’s is a very different cultural imprint when you are going to work with Plant Ma and can be, can be challenging to enter into our territory in which the rules are different and the framework is different and the paradigm is different, but can be also very enriching because you learn a lot when you participate in our cultures.

Sam Believ: Definitely. I think the indigenous people, even in big cities in Colombia, they, the culture is still very much so mixed so that they’re some of the culture of plant medicines and connection to nature, it still remained mixed in with even in big cities. And I guess that’s a good thing when it comes to working with medicine.

Also I’ve heard somewhere that Columbia is in the top three of the countries in the world as a, based on the percentage of the population that have tried ayahuasca, I think it’s somewhere around like half percent or click in between half percent and 1%, which is sounds very little, but it is actually still quite a lot comparing to to the rest of the world.

So let’s talk about bad trips. What are bad trips? Are they really bad? What to do with them? Should we avoid them, et cetera. What is your opinion?

David Londoño: Yeah, it is an important subject. Generality. The concept of bad trip comes from psychic work, and it is. From the concept you have this notion of trip no.

Which originally is very associated with drugs and with recreational drugs and with drugs used to entertain yourself or to avoid certain pains or certain suffering that you can find in your own life. When you try Ayahuasca or master plan work, the approach is very different in one hand because we don’t drink or I think what we should not approach ayahuasca as a recreational substance or as something to avoid life or avoid or own difficulty, but indeed is something that.

Can help us to connect with ourselves and to connect with our own lives and to connect with others. And that sometimes implies certain time suffering because if we have been trying to avoid, for instance, our own anger or our own sadness or our own grief for some years and suddenly we try ayahuasca and ayahuasca in order to develop the therapeutic process.

Make us to connect with these difficult emotions and to, for instance, to to contact our own sadness or our own despair or our own anger. We can believe that is quotation marks a bad trip, but indeed is part of the therapeutic effect of the plant that is, you know helping us to touch.

To go through all of that in order to elaborate those moments of our life. And those unresolved wounds and so on and so forth can be painful. But it is for a good reason. It is part of the work and sometimes people are confronted with very difficult, situations of their lives or very difficult memories or very difficult relationships, and they ended thinking oh, it was a bad trip because it was not I was not feeling happy during or afterwards.

But indeed from the therapeutic angle, it was a very good therapeutic experience because help the person to real life, all of that, and to go through it and to. Liberate part of it and to have realizations and so on and so forth. Depend on the perspective, but also sometimes people have journeys in which because a lack of preparation, a lack of screening, a lack of integration, or just bad facilitation during the night, people get harmed.

People get experience with aset of can be traumatic, that can be harmful, that people drink too much equal drink too fast. Just today I was talking with a person that drink more than 10 times in just one month without preparation and without integration and the person end developing some sort of anxiety disorder.

Sometimes what people report as a problem, it is a real problem and it’s not an therapeutic eh outcome. Eh, it is necessary to have some sort of discernment about what was going on there. It was a therapeutic or indeed something went wrong and requires to be addressed in order to, make the people feel stable and with good orientation. Again,

Sam Believ: definitely Ayahuasca has to be taken very carefully and with a lot of respect and preparation. I agree with that. And bad trips sometimes can be very productive as well. Let’s let’s take it to the more positive side. Let’s talk about, the benefits and therapeutic potential of ayahuasca with depression, addiction, grief, and trauma.

David Londoño: The therapeutic benefits of ayahuasca? This is a big question. No, on one hand, people often call ayahuasca a master plant, and that comes also from the. Indigenous wisdom and the indigenous knowledge I’m from the indigenous perspective and from the traditional indigenous perspective plants are sentient and alive.

They are not just an object that is there in order to, to humans, take advantage of them. But, soul and have intentions, and you have, you can deal a relationship with them and they can teach you different types of knowledge. So when you drink ayahuasca ayahuasca can teach you and can teach you about many different things.

And that can be extremely therapeutic. I ask county, you have to handle certain situations. I you have to deal with. Certain emotions. Aya ask can tell you how to grieve. I ask can help, you, can tell you about how to, improving your work with your family and so on and so forth. It is to visit a teacher.

No, a very old and wise teacher that, that’s in one side on the other side ayahuasca facilitates introspection. So when we drink Ayahuasca, it is easier to go inside of us. Essentially develop more self knowledge, and that can be extremely therapeutic because if we know ourselves better we can essentially deal with the challenges of life with more preparation and with more wisdom.

No we need to know ourselves to. To live better with ourselves than with others. And self knowledge is like an essential aspect of life for many different ways. Traditions and Ayahuasca facilitates that introspection and insights. We, it’s very, it’s easier to develop s insight when we are in the alter state of consciousness that Ayahuasca helped to appear.

On the other hand, Iowa’s High is purgative and in, in different areas of the jungle, he lives called ayahuasca. The pork, no emphasizing their, or focusing on the cleansing aspect of the ayahuasca. And that means that Wasco helps us to clean our mind, clean our bodies. Clean our emotions and clean, clean our energetic field and cleansing is a very important aspect of traditional medicine and traditional healers work around cleansing because that is an important aspect of the prevention of illness and also an important aspect of the, health.

So in the jungle in certain areas when people have problem with their walls or with hunting or with their relationships, they go and they ask for a pork and cleansing is a very important aspect of station medicine. And I, ayahuasca brings cleansing. This is another therapeutic aspect, hospital of ayahuasca and ayahuasca also often for people at some point.

Help to reconnect with spirituality and in a world where there is a lot of discontent with religious traditions and a lot of distrust around religion and many people develop some sort of, no. As a consequence of the distrust regarding the religious institutions it is very important to reconnect with the spirituality in a way that is not dogmatic, is not mediated by an institution.

It is nominated by a particular dogmatic religion or it’s a connection with the spirituality. And that can be extremely. And on the other hand, ayahuasca help us often to reconnect with NA because, we live in apartments, we drive cars, we use our mobiles all of the time. And gall, without realizing it we lost, we lose connection with Earth.

And to feel part of NATO again can be very important for our. For health too. And then we have a specific, specific therapeutic effects of ayahuasca. Helping people to reprocess, ine wounds from different perspectives like can happen when someone is dealing with trauma in a good context, of course.

Help people to can help people to recover some sense of direction in life and can help people to understand more around the source of the pain or the emotional pain that is extremely important in different when you deal with different problems including addictions. Is big and we can talk about it for four hours, but of course has many important therapeutic effects.

Sam Believ: Yeah, we can talk about Ayahuasca for many hours. That’s why I have this podcast. And and now close to hang it conversations about I wascan from a very different angles. David, thank you so much for your knowledge. Thank you for for your perspective. Where can people find more about you, where they can learn more about your work?

David Londoño: Yes. If you check for my pro profile in Google, you can find my David psychology. If you look for that, you can find my profile in different websites and it’s possible to connect with me.

Sam Believ: Perfect. Thank you David. Thank you for the work you’re doing. Guys check him out. He’s it’s very important to look at the safety of this work.

I will see you in the next episode of I’ll file, ask a podcast. Thank you for listening.

David Londoño: Thank you for the invitation.

Sam Believ: I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’d like to support us and psychedelic renaissance at large, please follow us and leave us a like wherever it is you’re listening. Share this episode with someone who will benefit from this information.

Nothing in this podcast is intended as medical advice, and it is for educational and entertainment purposes only. This episode is sponsored by Lara Ayahuasca Retreat. At Lara, we combine affordability. Accessibility and authenticity. The wra Connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you.