Igor Domsac | March 14, 2025
On March 13, ICEERS held a virtual seminar entitled “Ayahuasca and Safety: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Ceremonial Work in Non-native Contexts”, a meeting that brought together virtually fifty participants from various countries such as Brazil, Ecuador, Italy, Spain, Holland, Sweden, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Chile and the United States, demonstrating the growing international interest in ethical and safety issues in ayahuasca ceremonies outside traditional Indigenous contexts.
The session was led by Jerónimo Mazarrasa and David Londoño, both members of the ICEERS team with extensive experience researching and training on these issues. The seminar opened a participatory space in which attendees could vote to decide the priority issues they preferred to address: the risk of retraumatization in vulnerable participants and the phenomenon of spiritual bypass among facilitators were chosen.
A double-edged sword
David Londoño, psychologist and psychotherapist, was in charge of starting the conversation on trauma management, highlighting the double reality of working with ayahuasca. As he explained, although the plant is often promoted as an effective tool for treating psychological trauma, the experience can become a “double-edged sword.” Although many people manage to reprocess traumatic situations from more mature and spiritual perspectives, others experience overwhelming and painful episodes that can worsen the symptoms with which they came. In this sense, David emphasized that “not everyone has the adequate psychological structure to face these intense experiences,” so he recommended prudence, rigorous previous evaluation, professional accompaniment and careful attention during the whole ceremonial process.
In relation to this topic, Jerónimo Mazarrasa stressed the importance of avoiding risky interpretations of the emerging contents during a session. “Some people may have memories of real traumatic situations, but others may be confronted with memories or perceptions that are not necessarily true or verifiable,” he noted. For this reason, the Program Director at ICEERS indicated that it is essential for people facilitating sessions to be aware of their own limitations and to refer their participants to specialized professionals in case of doubts or important difficulties.
Spiritual bypass
The second topic addressed, chosen by the audience, was spiritual bypassing, defined by David as “using spiritual beliefs or practices as a shortcut to avoid facing uncomfortable or painful situations.” Using the metaphor of crossing a desert in a helicopter, he explained that spiritual bypass leads people to avoid facing their real problems, making genuine emotional healing difficult. Jerónimo Mazarrasa delved deeper into this problem, pointing out how great spiritual truths can be distorted until they become tools of manipulation or abuse. He exemplified situations where facilitators interrupt legitimate emotional processes, under spiritual arguments such as “you should not judge” or “everything happens for a reason,” thus imposing barriers to a healthy and authentic emotional integration.
One aspect highlighted by both speakers was the need for humility and caution in ceremonial work with ayahuasca, always recognizing the limits of the facilitator’s knowledge and prioritizing at all times the safety of the participant. In the words of Jerónimo, “no one should take ayahuasca without being fully convinced to do so, or be convinced by someone else, given the potency and complexity of its effects.”
A course on ayahuasca and safety
The seminar concluded with a brief round of questions where the audience could express specific concerns about participant selection criteria and strategies to avoid retraumatization. Finally, the speakers recalled that these issues are so broad and complex that ICEERS Academy offers a specialized course on safety and good practices in ayahuasca ceremonies, whose next edition will begin in May, with registration open until the end of April.
This virtual event reaffirmed the need to continue building collaborative and interdisciplinary spaces to ensure that the contemporary use of ayahuasca is developed under clear ethical standards, respectful of Indigenous cultural practices and oriented towards the integral and sustainable well-being of the people involved.
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