ayahuma.<\/em> With respect to my tinnitus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n(1) Immediately on moving into my hut (tambo) at the edge of the forest, the myriad insect sounds were so loud that they effectively masked my tinnitus with this comforting, natural \u201cgreen noise\u201d. I resisted the periodic impulse to plug my ears and check whether my tinnitus was even still present, and enjoyed the ambiguity. Venturing out of the forest into the center grounds I could again hear it, but felt something healing about sleeping within the masking natural soundscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(2) I received guidance from the plant spirits in dreams (this sounds pretty mystical, but that\u2019s just how it is) on how to address the tinnitus, which effectively amounted to repairing the relationship between myself and the traumatized parts of my body<\/em> (perhaps as seen through some self-referential imaginal capacity we all have) by apologizing, taking responsibility, asking forgiveness for not having been more careful, and so on. I perceived (via dream symbolism, and in ayahuasca visions) that this part of my body was angry<\/em> at \u201cme\u201d and so I started making peace through acknowledgement: \u201cyou have every right to be angry, you can be angry for as long as you want, etc.\u201d Over time, the anger of this \u201cpart\u201d of me dissipated, and I was able to repair the relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n(3) One ceremony at a time, I sensed that other small changes were taking place. Often, during the peak of the ayahuasca effect, the tinnitus sound would be tremendously amplified. I took this to be a symptom of slow rewiring. Without checking too often (I didn\u2019t want to be preoccupied at all with it), I sensed a slow diminishment in volume of the tinnitus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
End result:<\/strong> After three months in the rainforest, I returned home to the US. I remember explicitly checking in on my tinnitus, which had faded in volume by perhaps about half: I noticed that although I could hear the sound, it held no interest\/emotional charge to my psyche.<\/em> In other words, those continuous negative thoughts, the futile attempts to push the sound away, in fact any sense of distress: this was all gone. The sound was there, yet just uninteresting<\/em> to my brain, and therefore didn\u2019t bother me or catch my attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs I write this, over two years after that healing journey, although I can still hear my tinnitus (obviously, in a quiet room; even in a busy coffee shop, although barely), it\u2019s now a fully integrated part of my sonic landscape, meaning that I just don\u2019t pay attention to it. So my conclusion is that yes, ayahuasca (over time) can help heal tinnitus. Part of the ayahuasca experience is that before a ceremony, it is hard to imagine how one will feel afterwards: energy shifts so much. In the same way, it\u2019s hard to imagine the feeling of pain while not feeling it. So there may be a feeling of distress that you have now because of your tinnitus, which is hard to imagine, in a present-feeling way, not being there. For me, relationship<\/em> repair (between parts of myself), facilitated by ayahuasca, was the pathway which healed the intense distress trapped by association within the tinnitus signal, while time and holistic healing in a natural setting reduced the sound\u2019s volume. I ultimately made further meaning of the experience through major gratitude for being \u201ccalled back\u201d to the rainforest and the magical\/growth experience which unfolded there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several years ago I was hit with some pretty severe tinnitus, which resulted from an overly loud musical performance at a bar. I had worn my trusty musician\u2019s earplugs, yet the music was so loud (and perhaps my ears already were sensitive from earlier exposure) that I ended up with a persistent ringing at a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mh-z.com\/nihuerao\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mh-z.com\/nihuerao\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mh-z.com\/nihuerao\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mh-z.com\/nihuerao\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mh-z.com\/nihuerao\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.mh-z.com\/nihuerao\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56,"href":"http:\/\/www.mh-z.com\/nihuerao\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mh-z.com\/nihuerao\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mh-z.com\/nihuerao\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mh-z.com\/nihuerao\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}