I will say in advance that this particular blog post is a little more for women, but men, please do read it too. It might give you some valuable insight into the women in your life!
I have personally worked with a number of visionary plants for more than a decade now, and altered states of consciousness for even longer, and as much as I have been on a path of healing others, I have also been healing myself. No healer is perfect, nor are we infallible. And so as part of my personal healing maintenance, I research, I work with a circle of healers I trust, and I stick to a spiritual practice that gives me ongoing structure and support.
Visionary plant medicine has had a lot of media attention the last 5 years or so. There have been movies, documentaries, celebrity mentions and now luxury retreat centers have sprouted up like mushrooms, some of which promise you a miracle if you work with their brand of "plant medicine", namely Ayahuasca.
I personally have respect and reverence for all the healing plants available to us on this beautiful planet. All of them are healers in some way, shape or form. Some (such as Ayahuasca, San Pedro, Peyote, Iboga and Psilocybin mushrooms among others) are considered Plant Teachers, and they reach out to our consciousness in a visionary way that will uplift our awareness and allow for us to experience something more than this simple three dimensional reality. We can finally gain a recognition of what our soul is, through stepping out of this physical body just for a short time to gain a wider perspective, hence we get the opportunity to experience that we are more than just a sack of meat and bones.
When undertaken with intention and respect, this process allows for a change in perception, it gives us hope, and meaning.
And what is a miracle really - but merely a shift in perception, from fear to love, as Marianne Williamson so aptly says.
Not every single person on this planet is on a path where visionary plant medicine is relevant for them and their personal journey. Other plants can be used with intention and respect to achieve wonderful healing outcomes, just perhaps in a more subtle way.
"But healing with coffee?" I hear you say...."Sounds like a Starbucks sponsored article, surely!?"
It might seem like wishful thinking, I thought so myself too until I discovered how incredibly healing the spirit and physical substance of coffee can be when used with intention. Over the years I have heard conflicting stories about coffee. Many are at best ambivalent, some downright demonizing. Some sources online say that in excess, drinking coffee can be harmful for your nervous system, your gut bacteria, bad for the heart along with numerous other health problems. Granted in the west, Coffee (like other sacred and medicinal plants) has been over used and abused by the masses.
However it is a different case in other parts of the world. Coffee ceremonies have traditionally been a part of East African and Arabic culture for thousands of years where prayers are still offered over each pouring, and where coffee beans are considered sacred in Islamic mythology.
I admit that I spent years on my spiritual path not touching the stuff. As a medicine facilitator, coffee was not allowed for me. However, I chose to be curious in this instance rather than stay in judgement about this plant. Humans, as we perceive ourselves presently, have been evolving for more than a few thousand years together with the Flora and Fauna currently existing on the surface of Earth. Through my personal healing journey and explorations, I have grown to more clearly and deeply understand the realm of plants and elementals.
I have a more mystical approach to my understanding of plants though, hence my relationship with trees and plants is similar to how some people might have a connection with another human. Except for me, my connection with trees and plants is more trusting than with humans. I have found that trees for instance have no reason to lie. And the information they give me is always accurate, uplifting, gentle and compassionate. And so I have learnt that although they all have individual personalities, they are always great fonts of wisdom. And so personally, I would never want to demonized any plant, no matter how toxic it may at first appear for the human body.
Back to coffee, all I really knew about it was that it was tasty, made me a little jittery and was not fit for excessive consumption: not for me anyway. Luckily, I eventually discovered coffee's amazing visionary and healing powers as a result of my own healing journey.
I first started trying out coffee enemas a few years ago. I was working out some gastric issues together with some healing colonic therapy. I found coffee enemas to be helpful but was not 100% sure why, other than that they helped my liver to release bile and built up toxins from the colon. Little did I know that coffee neutralizes not only physical toxins, but also toxins related to mental, emotional, and spiritual functioning. In my research I discovered the work of Dr. Lawrence Wilson, (who works closely with Dr Gershwin famous for his wonderful cleanse protocol and his healing work around Cancer), and he maintains that a woman has extra energetic fields around her pelvic area wherein she absorbs the energy of all her sexual encounters (both pleasurable and abusive). He advocates coffee implants for women to not only heal the physical tissues of the womb and genitalia but also the residual energies of past emotional and sexual abuse. For this he recommends coffee implants, in combination with coffee enemas.
A coffee implant is well, a vaginal implant wherein coffee is poured into the vagina and stored for at least half an hour - if not the whole night (which is recommended). The detoxing for me was meant to assist with the removal of excess copper from my reproductive system. I decided to give Dr Wilson's unorthodox techniques a try. I followed his directions very closely - not always easy while traveling and staying with people! The water needs to be distilled at best or pure spring water at the very least, and the coffee needs to be organic and of a certain quality used especially for enemas. Despite being on the road for months on end, I managed to get my coffee preparation done at night and later worked myself into all manner of inverted positions in the bath or shower to implant said coffee before bed time (trust me it can get a bit messy and a shower after each application is highly recommended).
To my amazement, I could sleep, and I had incredibly vivid dreams, night after night - all deeply related to me processing and releasing old wounds and trauma around my childhood and adolescence. Strangely, men from my past, whom I had not thought about for many years (or conveniently had forgotten about), resurfaced in my conscious waking state, circulated my conscious mind for a bit and then left me and floated away like dry leaves scattered by the breeze. Over the period of around three months of working with coffee at least every second night, I felt all manner of emotions well up within me - somedays I wept and howled and beat my pillow viciously to release the anger towards men from my past that surfaced as a result. One day the depression that came up was so black, I curled into a little ball on the floor and prayed to God for a swift death! Very unlike me! This only lasted for about half an hour - but it was perhaps one of the most intense half hours of my life outside of an Iboga ceremony!
And my dreams!!! I dreamt of pulling out parasites that were inhabiting my pelvic area and of being sexually exploited by powerful men to promote their own gains. Over time I noticed that my lower belly (which had been swollen and sometimes during periods of stress it could become so distended to the point of me looking pregnant, no matter how much I fasted or dieted), it actually started to go down and flatten out. My inner thighs slimmed down, as if the lymphatic system in this area which was always kind of "congested" since my childhood, was being kick started again. My menstrual flow, which for years had been dark, globby and unhealthy looking in texture, became bright red and light in flow and lasted fewer days.
According to Dr Wilson, this is a rebooting of the whole menstrual cycle - another gift of the coffee implants.
Most amazing for me was the dream I had where another powerful healing plant in the Ayurvedic tradition appeared to me in a dream and told me to make a poultice out of her leaves and apply it on my whole pelvic area for healing. In another dream, a shaman from the Peruvian jungle stepped out of his Ayahuasca ceremony and blew mapacho (sacred tobacco) smoke on my lower regions as I floated in the air.
The process gave me a lot of clarity and awareness around repressed aspects of my sexuality and my physical body, and I gained much release around certain experiences from my past, which I had not been able to reach in over ten years of working with other (psychedelic) plant medicines.
Who would have thought that the spirit of Coffee could allow such intense emotional and physical healing in such a safe and compassionate way, perhaps it came at the time I was ready for it, and in a way that my consciousness could handle it - in dreams.
I do believe that each of the beloved plants and trees on this planet have a consciousness and a purpose for how they orchestrate the healing they provide. I am filled with such gratitude over and over again for the powerful experiences Spirit has gifted to me, when I have had the courage to open my heart to their messages and to follow through with faith and courage.
I have birthed a sacred container, opening soon for women who desire to move more deeply into their ancestral gifts and shamanic practices for heart and womb healing: www.scarabdeva.com/rose-dieta-immersion
For more information on this approach to healing with coffee, distance healing, spiritual counseling and for visionary plant integration sessions, you can find me at www.scarabdeva.com