Aya - put some respect on her name

ayahuasca vine illustration imt

*content warning* 

describes the use of nontraditional methods of treating trauma and the use of psychedelic substances. this article is meant to educate and not as a prescription.

by Lesley-Ann Brown

I’m not a sociologist, so I’m not fully equipped to interpret what it means when a person or thing becomes a punchline to a Chelsea Handler joke, but I am sure there are worse fates. Still, when I heard ayahuasca’s name come out of her mouth, I felt a need to speak up for it like you’d speak up to a bully picking on your best friend. Although, in all fairness to Handler, the joke was funny, this time. 

I’m using Chelsea Handler as an example here – because I know how problematic she can be. And the fact that I’m engaging with this name, is a testimony to the power of ayahuasca.  

Full disclosure: I’m one of those annoying folks who refer to ayahuasca as ‘Aya.’ But according to the South African Black Consciousness Scholar Simmi Dullay, ‘Aya’ is an ancient word that could mean many things. She explains, "it could mean mother, caregiver, a nurse even. So calling the plant by this name repositions the wisdom archetype of the crone, grandmother, and teacher.”  And in many ways, this is precisely what Aya has the potential to be. So, in my efforts to decenter humans and work on my speciesism, this is how I will refer to her for the rest of this piece.  Aya. 

Originally from South America, the concoction is usually composed of the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi), the chacruna leaf (Psychotria viridis), the charanga vine, and an assortment of other plants. “Ayahuasca” can refer to either the vine itself or the brew — of which the vine is one of the constituents. Preparing this brew is an hours-long affair. The chemical composition of the two plants provides the user with a psychedelic experience. The ayahuasca vine's hallucinogenic substance, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), is also secreted from our brains. But we can’t eat it because our stomach enzyme monoamine oxidase blocks its effects. So, somehow, a long time ago, folks learned to combine these plants just so their psychedelic properties could take effect. How did practitioners of the past know to combine these particular plants for this specific effect? 

Its effect induces hallucinations that include, but are not limited to, visitations from other beings, feelings of spiritual ecstasy, deep connection, and even enlightenment. There’s the other side as well — I know folks who have plummeted into the bowels of hell while on this stuff. It’s not for the faint of heart. The experience can be intense. 

The ayahuasca vine — which looks very much like its Latin name, a rope banister of sorts — along with its cohorts in herbal healing, is said to have been used for various aspects of recovery for millennia. This idea, however, has received a little pushback, with some suggesting that ayahuasca use may not be a ritual spanning back millennia but a new one, picked up by the people in a demonstration of how culture changes, updates, and accommodates. 

 Western science still cannot understand how this chemical concoction was figured out by the otherwise “primitive” folk of the Amazon. It continues to be baffled by Amazonians’ vast botanical knowledge, all of which they claim came from the plants themselves. To let you know just how real this is, the chemical compound we use for anesthesia today was borrowed from them (with no financial compensation). Their curare — an admixture of various plants in which they then dipped their darts — would paralyze their prey when hit. There are many different concoctions of this — each providing a specific type of paralysis that the hunter may wish for their game. This would later revolutionize medical anesthesia. 

The plants, they said, told them in a dream. 

For the record, Aya came through for me during a difficult period. And while it is true that this ceremony has been co-opted and abused many times over, as well as reports of over-harvesting the plants involved – there are sustainable ways to obtain it and respectfully participate in the ceremony. I don’t think, however, that Aya is for everyone. I’m not telling you to do Aya.  Do your research. I am merely attempting to restore the rightfully dignified position that she deserves. 

My first and last encounter (one was enough!) was in the Danish countryside with about twenty other participants. Like everyone else that evening, I had come to this ceremony for healing. Through the very nature of the ceremony, I was made aware that this healing process wasn’t just for me but was a collective endeavor as well.  That created a deep feeling of community for me. 

My ayahuasca experience was full of black panthers, floating angels, and great feelings of universal love. I felt a strong sense of connectedness with all around me. I also cried for a large portion of the eight-hour journey and, in the process, rid my body of many tears I was meant to shed. 

There’s ample evidence from various scholarly reports that ayahuasca can assist our species in reconnecting with ourselves, each other, and the natural world around us. It has had and continues to have success in treating addiction and trauma. A part of me holds space for the intelligence “nature” holds, an intelligence we humans may not always be privy to. There’s a saying that you can tell what people need through the wild plants growing around them.  For example, dandelions tend to grow in abundance in heavily polluted areas – a plant known for its detoxifying properties. I say all this because I do believe there is a reason there has been such an uptick in Aya’s use, even to the point where it has become mundane, the butt of a Chelsea Handler joke. But I ask, what better medicine could this world use as we sit amidst a mental health crisis exacerbated by the pandemic? What better treatment could I try in my desperation to find peace and balance in an inner/outer world that sometimes seems so off-kilter?  Again, Aya isn’t for everyone, but she has been and continues to be a great teacher for those who feel compelled to lean into some plant wisdom. 

I write more about this and other treatments/studies around trauma in my recently published book, Blackgirl On Mars. You can purchase here 

Blackgirl on Mars is a radical memoir that chronicles author, educator and activist Lesley-Ann Brown's two years' worth of travel searching for "home".

As she travels across the US during the Black Lives Matter protests and Covid-19 pandemic and then to Trinidad and Tobago to attend the funeral of her grandmother, Brown tells her own life-story, as well as writing about race, gender, sexuality, and education, and ideas of home, family and healing.

Both a radical political manifesto and a moving memoir about finding your place in the world, Blackgirl on Mars is about what it means to be a Black and Indigenous woman in Europe and the Americas in the twenty-first century.

Lesley-Ann Brown Blackgirl on Mars - Book Passage Conversations with Aut...

Finland is a country...

Finland is a country....

According to some conspiracy theorists (my son tells me), Finland is not real-- but here I am about to land. It's my second time here, and I can see the forests from up high, and this gives me comfort. The flight from Copenhagen to Helsinki is uneventful and short, two things I value. I take a cab from the airport to where I'll be staying for a week - I'm here to conduct a workshop at UniArts Helsinki/Theatre Academy in connection with the M/other Becomings Symposium; a two-day event where I was also invited to be among the host of keynote speakers and panels. m/other becomings is a collaboration between Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology (DK), The Association for Arts and Mental Health (DK), Kultivator (SE), Art Lab Gnesta (SE), and Bioart Society (FI).

Helsinki is green and sunny - the sun is out for the seven of the eight days that I'm there and wherever I walk the smell of lilacs and elderberry seem to follow. One morning, on my way to the Theatre Academy, I pass by a shrub of pine with pollen-laden cones. I discover from a local store that my place of temporary residence was once an insane asylum. Some mornings when I take this walk along the lake, on the undulating streets of Helsinki (watch yours step!) it seems like the bright yellow heads of the dandelions that bob in the breeze mock me slightly where are you going? stay here and hang with us! Look at you - so smart human. Going to work!  There is a sad silver sword philodendron in the window of a Thai restaurant that I pass everyday, and horsetail shoots - around since the time of dinosaurs pave my path in the park. Burdock, its leaves as large as callaloo bush - remind me of the medicine that's all around us, nature offering herself to us, her diversity unable to be grasped by my limited musings. 

Along with three students, Milda, Aino and Katinka - we co-created a zine exploring the themes of the upcoming symposium: m/otherhood. We spent the three days as if in an incubator - exchanging and developing ideas about m/otherhood.  We came up with Emo - the title a Finnish word that means "mother" for our animal relatives. You can it check out here - Emo.  It was a gift to get to work with these three thinkers and I'm impressed with the courage and vulnerability (the two are linked!) they all showed in this process. Together they touched upon themes of conflict mothering, intersections of class and sexuality, as well as some delving into their cunt-trees. I interviewed Wambui Njuguna-Raisanen, who practices integrates anti-racist work into her yoga practice, and included the piece in the zine. 

Summayah & Wambui

Connections

Last August I was invited by The Caribbean Housewife, Dutch-Curaçaon Jamain Brigithe to co-create a program for Copenhagen's Kulterhavn festival. I decided that given the location - at Copenhagen's harbor - I would rewrite Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid with a decolonial twist. Sorgenfri follows the tale of a young Danish man who sets sail on this ill-fated journey first to the west coast of Africa where Denmark once had a slave forte, and once the ship is filled with enslaved Africans, to the Danish West Indies and back again, this time without its human cargo but full of the goods plantations run by free labor provide - but the ship never returns to Denmark, it disappears just as it arrives to these seas. The ship's fate is based on fact, and the main character, a young man from Jutland, is based on Søren Kierkegaard's father. I did this because I wanted to find out more about Kierkegaard's family involvement in the trade of enslaved Africans, something that was shared with me by  Jamaica Kincaid, with whom I had the pleasure of lunching with last spring. 

It was at this event that I met Malou Solfjeld, who had recently discovered she was pregnant. Solfjeld is the type of reader you want to have: someone who not only reads your work, but becomes an enthusiastic ambassador of such work. Through her I was connected to Ida Bencke, the co-organizer along with BioArts Society and Aalto University for the M/other Becomings Symposium. Bencke is a curator, editor and educator and co-founder of Aesthetics and Ecology.  Since then Solfjeld has given birth - welcome to the world little Mio! 

Care

Talking about racial, class, gender and sexuality inequalities is one thing, but actually stepping up to the plate to ensure that individuals, no matter their socio-economic, racial, national background get the care that is necessary, is a must. I traveled a lot during my U.S. book tour,  and it takes its toll. Add to that that my grandmother transitioned during this period, I was, at times, a bit worn thin. Although it is a privilege to received invitations to far-away places, I now know that the way that I'm received is just as important. Am I showing up at a strange airport with no one to meet me? Is there someone who is available for support/contact? Does it have to be assumed that the participant carries the burden of the expenses up front, or is consideration given for those with less access to funds? 

It matters when we check in with one another, that we extend care to those who have traveled long distances to share space with us. I recently attended a conference with a friend who had traveled from a quite repressive country to participate in a conference about said repressive country- but it didn't seem as though the organizers took that into consideration. It's like having an anti-racism event in an overwhelmingly white country, inviting a Black person, but leaving that Black person to navigate this white foreign space alone. 

I'm happy to report that although I didn't travel far to get to Helsinki, Ida Bencke and Erich Berger and his team from BioArt Society, made me feel as though I was in good, capable and caring hands, and so safe and valued. 

M/other Becomings Day 1 & Day 2

Guests included keynotes by Ionat Zurr (artist, Symbiotica), Tiia Sudenkaarne (researcher) as well as presentations and panels with Ida Bencke (curator, LabAE), Margherita Pevere (artist), Signe Johannessen (artist), Emilia Tikka (designer), Lyndsey Walsh (artist), Riina Hannula (artist), and Chessa Adsit-Morris(theorist, Center for Creative Ecologies).

You can see the entire symposium here - M/other Becomings Day 1 & Day 2  .

It's a privilege to be able to gather, share and develop ideas with such a diverse group of thinkers. One of the ideas that kept on cropping up was the idea that as humans, we could never really ever grasp the entirety of an understanding - an idea that I think is always important to keep up front in all of our intellectual investigations. Personally, I feel as this is one of the biggest hurdles of humankind - this idea that all can be grasped, comprehended. This is also something that the Palestinian scholar Magid Shihade reminds me whenever he talks about one of the people he has studied most, the 14th century North African historiographer Ibn Khaldoun, who also stated, and re-stated this conundrum of sorts. 

It's easy to go to a conference and walk away feeling drained: the indoor lighting, the hours and hours of social interactions, that can be crippling for those of us who are either exhausted by the oppressive scheduling of capitalism and all that it has to share: racism, classism, etc.  But this wasn't the case this time. Rather, I felt invigorated by the ideas being put forth by the other participants, from Zurr's reflections that included the narrative of the incubator (did you know that they artificially incubated eggs in ancient Egypt?!) and some of the ethical questions we may want to consider when we talk about life; life as fetish/commodity and the strange affair of babies in incubators on display at Coney Island once upon a time...

Ionat Zurr

Tiia Sudenkaarne

Ida Bencke

Ida Bencke conjured up Revolutionary Mothering and the work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs and her groundbreaking Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals.  Bencke talked about mothering as a revolutionary practice (Ala Cynthia Dewi Oka) and about an art project in which she was involved that made installations in a mental institution, and how this shifted the power dynamics. Bencke even showed an actual ad that was on display a few years ago here in Denmark - on busses and other public spaces, that encouraged Danes to have more babies (which made me wonder if there were any such campaigns in place in Black and brown countries? I could guess the answer...)

Emilia Tikka

Emilia Tikka (designer) spoke about Mnemonia: Memories of the Birds, and the work she is doing with Oula A. Valkeapaa, a Sami reindeer herder living in the northern fell region of Finland, close to the Arctic Ocean. Their work deals with how the lives of humans and reindeer coincide. Tikka is a Finnish born transdisciplinary designer whose research and design practice focuses on speculative storytelling, exploring novel biosciences and the human  a film  that involves futuristic possibilities that bridge the genetic memories between human and in this case, the reindeer, while Riina Hannula made space for microbes along with other non-human relatives

Signe Johannessen a modern-day "bone collector"

Lyndsey Walsh

plant school

Friends

Gratitude

 to friends 

who kiss 

your hand

 and so 

mend your

 heart.