 I used to be anxious, I used to be stressed and I experienced a few massive burnouts before my first ayahuasca experience. Now it's been about eight months since my first experience in a luxury resort called Ritmia in Costa Rica. So the question is, have I changed since the experience or am I back to where I was before trying ayahuasca and will I drink ayahuasca ever again? Let's find out. Hi friends and welcome to your reception's YouTube channel. My name is Greg Gostinkar and I am the creator of this channel where we car everything from brain supplements to psychedelics. If you are interested then be sure to subscribe and hit the bell for notifications. There is no doubt that attending a plant medicine retreat was one of the most transformative and challenging weeks of my life. It involved a roller coaster of emotions, crying, vomiting, smiling and dancing, but most importantly discovering who I really was. But what have I learned during that experience and what has stayed with me? In this video I am going to focus on how I have changed, how do I feel eight months later, what have I learned, what is still missing and lastly I am going to reveal my further plans regarding the use of plant medicine. So stay with me till the end. Now for those who are new here, I had my first ayahuasca experience last September in Ritmia, probably the most luxurious and unorganized plant medicine center in the world that is located in Guanacasta Costa Rica. I stayed in their amazing resort for a week where I had four nights of ayahuasca ceremonies in a row. Now this is not the most affordable place in the world but if you want to attend an ayahuasca ceremony for the first time or if you like to be in a well-organized place with hundreds of employees who will take care of you 24-7 then this is the place to go. And there is a link below if you want to learn more about Ritmia. Now to my learnings. So as soon as I return home from Ritmia I set to myself, that's it. Now I understand the meaning of life, I know how life works, I know why I'm here, yeah it was just such a profound feeling that's really hard to describe now. But at the same time I also said I would never drink ayahuasca again. But is this still true? Well we'll get back to that soon. So what ayahuasca helped me to do, it really helped me get free of my biggest fears. It helped me find a feeling of the way I am. It helped me understand what we call life, how it works and even how my brain works. I saw life in a way I never thought possible and many of my beliefs about the world and life were shattered in just one night. Now for quite some time I was able to feel the energy, to feel people, to feel the trees in the forest and to feel myself so deeply that I could in no time tell how someone was feeling how things impact me etc. It was a very weird feeling but I could tell in advance when someone would get angry or happy for example. I was a different man, I didn't care about stupid things like what others think about me or what kind of an impression would I make on a particular person. I can imagine it was slightly weird being in my company, especially in a public place because if I didn't feel like doing something or talking to someone I would just walk away without any second thoughts. And I wouldn't care what others thought of me because life was magic and why waste it for such stupid things. Now I still had my ups and downs. There were days when I was extremely calm, but then for whatever reason a day came when I felt quite nervous and anxious. But that was nothing compared to how I sometimes felt before my ayahuasca experience. Now why the sudden change? I believe this happened because the struggle you have to go through on a ayahuasca ceremony is so hard that there is no doubt you want to go back there and repeat it at least not any time soon. So your subconscious mind would do everything it could to tell it that now you are healed and no you don't need more ayahuasca. Well, we'll get back to that soon. So yes, for the first few weeks or even for the first two months or so I was a transformed man. I started doing yoga weekly, I started spending more time in nature, I started meditating more often and I started carrying glass above things I couldn't control. But then life happened. I launched a new business and so I got very busy for a couple of months. I still kept my daily habits, but there was way more stress and nervousness in my everyday life. I could feel the anxiety slowly returning, but that was the first time in my life that I had the mental tools to block it. It felt like anxiety was knocking on my doors, I could see it, but I said to her no, you are not entering this house, not now, not ever. Or so I thought. I felt like that for most of the last half a year until one day about two weeks ago when I was walking in the forest and I heard a call I didn't want to hear. And the call said, Greg, it's time for another ayahuasca experience. So I was like, shit, do I have to do it again? Do I even have the guts to do it? Well, before I answered that, why did I get the call in the first place? Have I changed again? Am I back to where I started? Do I really need another ayahuasca experience? Well, to be totally honest, I was thinking about that for a while before shooting this video. And the answer is no. Of course, I'm not back to where I started this journey. I've experienced so much, I've learned so much, and I've changed so much that I will never go back to where I was. That's just impossible. But something else happened. Now, it was the first time in my life that I could feel myself and the world around me. And I knew that there's still something in me that's not how I want it to be. It has nothing to do with my previous anxiety or stress or burnout, and it has everything to do with things that I haven't discovered yet. It was an epiphany. I got this call from ayahuasca not to heal again or to learn how to stop repeating my old mistakes, but to go one level deeper. And when I understood it, I was like, hell yeah, I'm doing it again. But as soon as I said that, in that very moment, I remembered every detail of my first ayahuasca experience. I remember how sick I felt, how I wanted to go home, how I was scared, and how I was wondering, why am I doing this to myself? Why do I have to suffer so much? And I remember the crying and all other stuff I don't want to talk about in this video. And this got me thinking, have I really changed? Because if I had, why am I so afraid of another ayahuasca experience then? That was when I reached out to some of my friends who had way more experience with plant medicine, and they told me something that had a profound impact on me. Now, even if you have hundreds of ceremonies in your life, if you know exactly how the medicine worked, you would always feel this fear and respect of this mystical thing. And when I got this, I was like, yeah, alright, let's do it then. So yes, I'm going on another ayahuasca experience in a few days, so stay tuned because I'll share the whole experience on my channel. Now, am I doing this just because I need to? No, not at all. I've changed a lot since my first experience. And as you just learned, once you have this profound experience, you cannot return back. So I'm doing it because I know I can still go deeper and deeper. And this is exactly what I'm afraid of, but what I want to do at the same time. So what does this say about my healing or your healing if you ever decide to take ayahuasca? Well, the fact is that ayahuasca will not heal you, but it will open doors for self-healing. It will show you how to access things you already have, but you forgot how to use them in order to heal yourself. Now, some of you may only need one experience with this medicine, while others will want to repeat it several times. I deeply believe that to truly open, you only need to attend one ceremony. But once this happens, you may want to go deeper and deeper like I'm going soon. So if you want to join me on this journey, subscribe below and watch my next videos. And if you want to know what happened during my first ayahuasca experience, then watch my video up here. Thank you guys for watching and I hope to see you soon again.