Ayahuasca ceremonies, relationality, and inner-outer transformations to sustainability. Evidence from Takiwasi Center in Peru

ABSTRACT

The use of psychedelic substances is increasingly associated with nature-relatedness. We explore whether entheogenic uses of ayahuasca in settings co-produced between Indigenous and Western knowledges may also foster relationality and sustainability transformations across ontology, praxis, and epistemology. A survey with 74 English-speaking individuals who attended Amazonian healing ceremonies at the Takiwasi Center in Peru, along with 11 semi-structured interviews and a discussion circle revealed unexpected personal shifts towards relationality. Beyond the expected increase in nature-relatedness, participants also reported boundary dissolution and changes in their perceptions of self, leading them to experience nature and non-human beings as having spiritual or human-like agency. The blurring of perceived boundaries between themselves and nature also challenged the materialist ontologies in which they had been educated and socialized. In terms of both epistemologies and praxis, co-produced ayahuasca ceremonies enhanced relational thinking and embodiment of relationality. Inner-outer transformations ensued from the post-ceremonial integration of the ‘plant’s teachings’ into participants’ daily lives. We discuss our findings’ contributions to the emerging field of inner transformations and the relational turn in sustainability. Potential sustainability benefits of scaling plant-based ceremonies need to be measured against their impacts on the Amazon rainforest and its biocultures.

Key policy highlights

• Relational Thinking: Ceremonial use of ayahuasca, when combining Indigenous and Western knowledge, fosters a shift in thinking that emphasizes connections between people and ecosystems, challenges rigid beliefs, and privileges more intuitive, relational ways of being in the world. This shift supports inner-outer transformations towards sustainability.

• Inner Transformations Leading to Sustainable Actions: Ayahuasca ceremonies were linked to shifts in lifestyle choices, decreased consumption of environmentally harmful substances, and a stronger inclination towards nature and community living.

• Indigenous Relationality: Ayahuasca ceremonies co-produced with Indigenous knowledge holders offer insights into reciprocity with non-humans, balanced living, and nurturing relationships, all of which are fundamental for sustainable futures.

• Ethical Considerations: Responsible and respectful usage of ayahuasca includes considering the sustainability of the plant, the ecosystems it grows in, and the Indigenous cultures sharing their knowledge. Supportive practices and trained guidance should accompany ayahuasca use, ensuring safety and ethical engagement.

• Knowledge co-production: Sustainability science can inform the design and implementation of co-produced ceremonial spaces and practices to ensure the sustainable inner-outer transformations reported in this study.

EDITED BY:

• Simon West

KEYWORDS:

• Nature-relatedness
• relational turn
• inner-worlds
• sustainability transformations
• Indigenous relationality
• psychedelics

Introduction

Plants belonging to Amazonian medicinal and shamanic traditions, like ayahuasca, can be powerful allies in exploring our relationships with non-human beings and facilitating inner-outer transformations towards sustainability. Minds around the globe are inundated with reports and images about the proliferation of social tensions and ecological destruction that materialistic societies are causing. There is an urgent need to address these wicked problems, whose root-causes and solutions have been linked to subjective processes and ‘inner worlds’– including emotions, thoughts, identities, and beliefs (Horlings 2015; Manuel-Navarrete and Pelling 2015; Ives et al. 2019). Inner or deep leverage points are more difficult to pull, but they have greater transformative potential (Meadows 1999). One of the deepest domains of leverage consists of replacing the paradigm that separates nature from humans (Ives et al. 2018; Davelaar 2021; Riechers et al. 2021). This paper explores inner transformations resulting from co-produced ayahuasca ceremonies, which include traditional Amazonian therapeutic and ceremonial practices such as purges and diets. Building on Ives et al. (2023) IMAGINE framework, we analyze how these inner transformations may challenge prevailing ontological assumptions about the nature of sustainability crises and the world at large, as well as their implications for sustainability praxis and epistemology.

Inner-outer transformations are often conceptualized as deep leverage points for global transformations (Gray and Manuel-Navarrete 2021; Woiwode et al. 2021). These transformations may result from: (1) cross-cultural learning and long-term exposure to Indigenous knowledges (Gray and Manuel-Navarrete 2021), (2) environmental education and arts-based research methods capable of tapping into emotions and embodied experiences (Muhr 2020; Renowden et al. 2022), (3) socialized outdoor experiences (Peng 2020; Baird et al. 2022), (4) participating in rural and green urban spaces (Colding and Barthel 2017; Pérez-Ramírez et al. 2021), (5) collaborative learning involving multiple knowledge systems (Bryant and Thomson 2021; Moreno-Cely et al. 2021), and (6) adopting relational approaches, relational values, and Indigenous knowledges in conservation (Burgos-Ayala et al. 2020; Mattijssen et al. 2020). The role of psychedelics and Amazonian plant medicines in fostering inner-outer sustainability transformations remains largely underexplored, despite their potential as tools for reconnecting people with nature and to address global environmental challenges, such as climate change (Kettner et al. 2019; Sagioglou and Forstmann 2022).

Research on psychedelics has primarily explored psychiatric benefits, but there is growing attention to their potential to increase nature-relatedness (Lyons and Carhart-Harris 2018), and animal-relatedness (Pöllänen et al. 2022). A pioneering online study (n = 1487) discovered that classic psychedelics were uniquely predictive of self-reported pro-environmental behavior, and that this relationship was statistically explained by people’s degree of self-identification with nature (Forstmann and Sagioglou 2017). Another online survey (n = 654) found that nature relatedness was significantly increased 2 weeks, 4 weeks, and 2 years after the psychedelic experience (Kettner et al. 2019). Similarly, Irvine et al. (2023) found (n = 272) that pre-existing relations with nature were bolstered and new bonds were created by psychedelics. However, Forstmann et al. (2023) found that only psilocybin (versus LSD, mescaline, Salvia divinorum, ketamine, and ibogaine) was a strong reliable predictor of nature-relatedness, while N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) which is an active component in ayahuasca, was a weaker and less reliable predictor. Interestingly, in a previous study, Sagioglou and Forstmann (2022) found that long-term psychedelic use, mediated by nature relatedness, positively predicts objective knowledge about climate change.

Evidence of connections between entheogenic (or ceremonial) uses of ayahuasca and nature-relatedness is still sparse, though rapidly accumulating. Harms (2021) assessed how ritualistic elements of neo-shamanic ayahuasca experiences influenced environmental relations and found that ritual framings during these ceremonies enabled effective ties to emerge. In another study related to the sustained effects of ayahuasca, one-fourth of participants (n = 41) felt more connected to nature because of the experience (Bathje et al. 2021). Similarly, Aday et al. (2024) found that participants (N = 54) experienced significant increases in gratitude, nature relatedness, and nature appreciation at the one-week and one-month follow-ups compared to baseline after attending an ayahuasca retreat center. Furthermore, a proof-of-concept study revealed that participating in ayahuasca ceremonies led by Indigenous Amazonian shamans significantly increased nature relatedness right after the retreat as assessed via the Short form Nature Relatedness Scale and The Extended Inclusion of Nature in Self scale (Ruffell et al. 2024).

Our research explores the hypothesis that ceremonial uses of ayahuasca in co-produced contexts that combine lndigenous and Western knowledges (Buzinde et al. 2020), such as those at the Takiwasi Center in Peru, may trigger inner-outer transformations towards sustainability. This hypothesis is based on the plant’s potential effect on fostering relational views of reality that see inner and outer phenomena as interdependent and co-created (Ives et al. 2023). Relational views are an alternative to anthropocentric and materialist ontologies, which assume inner worlds to be exclusive to humans and to emerge from material processes in the brain (Kastrup 2019). Richard Norgaard argued that at the root of our sustainability crises is materialism, or the conception of the world as material objects apart from us ‘both as a vision of the good life and as a cosmological basis underlying epistemology and modern science’ (Norgaard 1995, p. 475). Recent work is closely examining the role of post-materialistic values in advancing sustainability (Booth 2021; Isham et al. 2022) and proposing alternatives to scientific materialism (Hyland 2022). Embracing post-materialism through relational ontologies supports Indigenous and other ways of knowing and doing, thus diversifying the dominant understandings of sustainability crises and enabling alternative actions to address them (Ives et al. 2023).

Ayahuasca: sacred plant, illegal drug, medicine, teacher, mother, spirit

Ayahuasca is a sacred medicinal plant brew, with a history of use among Amazonian Indigenous traditions, serving as a ritualistic tool to deepen communication with the non-human (Prayag et al. 2016; Ruffell et al. 2024; Argento et al. 2021). Ayahuasca in Kichwa means the vine of spirits or ancestors (Luna 2011). The brew combines Banisteriopsis Caapi vines with the leaves of a supporting plant that contains DMT, which is often Psychotria viridis (chacruna). DMT is criminalized in most countries following the 1971 United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances (UN 1971), but ayahuasca has become a global phenomenon (Tupper 2008, 2009).

Euro-centric cultures and medical researchers are starting to acknowledge the power of ayahuasca ceremonies for personal healing (Politi et al. 2021). For instance, neuropharmacology research conducted by Riba and Barbanoj (2005) explored the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca in forming new neural networks while Perkins and Sarris (2021) explored the potential of ayahuasca in helping people overcome childhood traumas. Researchers have also explored the use of ayahuasca as a therapeutic tool for treating drug addiction (Politi et al. 2020; Argento et al. 2021; Horák et al. 2021).

Researchers have shown that ayahuasca and other plants serve as people-kin and teachers; guiding, informing, diagnosing and curing (Attala 2017). Dev (2018, p. 187–188) aptly described how this relational subjectivism challenges basic Western onto-epistemologies:

[G]ranting subjectivity to plants may mean unseating oneself from a position of being a privileged knower, and it fundamentally questions human supremacy and Eurocentric hegemonic knowledges. Relating with plants as teachers requires humility, meeting the other subject at one’s limits of knowing, and acknowledging that we cannot circumscribe them in our own minds nor with our usual methods. […] what is at stake is not only who gets to exist in the world, as Donna Haraway (2008) has said, but also whose worlds get to exist, as well as whose knowledges get to count. First, plants are excluded from ontological status as knowing or even animate beings. Second, we limit all that exists to only those things knowable by humans with specific ways of knowing. Lastly, by excluding researchers’ personal relationships with plant spirits, we reproduce racialized knowledge hierarchies that continue to place plant spirits in the realm of ‘Indigenous beliefs’ and thereby construct those holding these beliefs as less valid knowers.

Principles of Indigenous knowledge have been increasingly recognized as having a critical contribution to the field of sustainability (Snively and Williams 2018; Burgos-Ayala et al. 2020; Artmann 2023). For many Indigenous cultures, non-human beings have agency (Chilisa 2019), and embody cosmic dimensions of life (Kimmerer 2002). Kohn (2013) discussed this notion through an exploration of the Runa (or Kichwa) people of Ecuador. His research indicated that the Runa people don’t discern a distinction between thoughts and physical figures, thus strengthening relationships with non-human beings. Furthermore, he asserts that this indistinction allows for the perceived boundary between human and non-human beings to dissolve. This notion that humans are living in a deeply relational universe is not only recognized through Indigenous perspectives, but also supported by metaphors and models based on concepts inspired by quantum physics and sustainability (Barad 2007; O’Brien 2016).

Co-produced Ayahuasca ceremonies

The ayahuasca ceremonies studied here were practiced by Western-educated individuals, but within Indigenous cultural contexts which are fundamentally relational (Dev 2018). Internationally recognized therapeutic community Takiwasi is a pioneering facility offering co-produced ceremonies that incorporate ayahuasca into treatment protocols for substance use disorders (Rush et al. 2021). Takiwasi combines traditional Amazonian medicine rituals with psychotherapy and community living. Patients participate in ayahuasca ceremonies and hold rituals with purgative plants over an eight-day isolation retreat locally known as dieta. A specialized Indigenous or mestizo healer attends to the patient during this retreat to prescribe healing plants. Therapists visit patients twice during their isolation to help integrate the experience (Rush et al. 2021). Dietas and ayahuasca ceremonies are also offered to non-addict participants in ritual retreats that are organized once per month (Rumlerová et al. 2021). By ritual use, we refer to the fact that, in the case of Takiwasi, ayahuasca is consumed within a ceremonial context, imbued by Indigenous and mestizo tradition (Luna 2011). Related to this, there is also special training to become a healer acknowledged by one’s own community. Healers’ training usually involves several years of plant intakes, adhering to dietary restrictions, abstinence from sexual activity, and acquiring helping spirits, powerful objects, and magical arrows (Luna 2011). In Peru, the ayahuasca ritual itself has been recognized as national cultural heritage (Giove 2022). In other contexts, ayahuasca is consumed for exclusively recreational or clinical uses (Dorsen et al. 2019). Brabec de Mori (2021) identified two ontologically different modes of ayahuasca use. On the one hand, traditional indigenous use implies interaction with spirits under an animist ontology. On the other hand, Western therapeutic uses attribute healing power to the physical substance and its immediate effects according to a naturalist ontology. Neo-shamanic uses tend to navigate these two extremes and have the risk of romanticizing indigeneity and nature (Brabec de Mori 2021).

The increased use of ayahuasca in Western religious, spiritual, and neo-shamanic settings can pose real ethical challenges due to the risks derived from appropriation, romanticization, extractivism or exploitation of Indigenous biocultures and ecosystems (Fotiou 2016, 2019; Winkelman 2017; Schenberg and Gerber 2022b). Neo-shamanic settings can reproduce the status quo of individualistic cultures and miss the relational and inner-outer transformative potential that ayahuasca ceremonies seem to offer in co-produced settings like Takiwasi. This has been reported in the case of Australian ceremonies; where the setting often facilitates individualistic experiences and interpretations centered in the self rather than a relationship (Rodd 2018). This is a topic of debate within the global Ayahuasca context, including at the regulatory level (Politi 2021; Tresca et al. 2021; Labate et al. 2022; Schenberg and Gerber 2022b, 2022b). Indigenous communities engaging with Ayahuasca are also trying to define a common strategy to deal with this issue (Indigenous People of Acre 2016). In the current international ayahuasca landscape, we can observe the multiplication of centers and courses that offer to westerners the chance to become shamans in the space of a few weeks, thus trivializing a thousand-year-old practice and opening the door to charlatans and risks for users.

Indigenous perspectives offer a deeper meaning of sustainability challenges that is more comprehensive than in Euro-western viewpoints and encompasses the agency of non-human entities, which can be endowed with capacities external to ordinary perception (McGregor 2004; Mazzocchi 2020). Indigenous scholars remind us how integral non-human beings are to knowing the world and living sustainably (Battiste and Henderson 2012; Bartlett et al. 2012; Kealiikanakaoleohaililani and Giardina 2016). Separateness involves living in a ‘state of isolation and disconnection’ from other beings (Kimmerer 2013, p. 208). The prominence of the idea and practices of relationality may empower Western-educated people to form familiar and intimate relationships with their surroundings (Stiegler and Nelson 2018; Artmann 2023).

Inner-worlds and the “Relational Turn” in sustainability

Relationality, and inner-world changes are increasingly discussed in conservation and sustainability science (Martin et al. 2016; Ives et al. 2019; Wamsler 2019). Inner-worlds are the multilayered, inner dimensions of human life, including beliefs, values, emotions, and identities (Ives et al. 2018; Kunze and Woiwode 2018). Woiwode et al. (2021) explored two additional aspects of people’s inner-worlds that are specially connected to Ayahuasca ceremonies: religion and spirituality. According to these authors, paradigm shifts are often rooted in people’s spiritual practices. Inner worlds are an underexplored means to account for deeper aspects of the human experience that may be fundamental in activating relational ontologies and inner-outer transformations towards global sustainability (Fischer and Riechers 2019; Gray and Manuel-Navarrete 2021; Horcea-Milcu 2022).

Sustainability rests on both individual and collective transformations. The inner-worlds approach has been criticized for its focus on individual behavior (Boda et al. 2022). However, the individual-collective duality is relaxed under a relational view of reality. According to Ives et al. (2023, p. 2779):

Inner transformation rests on a relational ontology, whereby inner and outer, and associated individual, collective and system-level phenomena are understood as interdependent and co-created. […] it is the quality of our relationships— with ourselves, others and the biosphere—that creates (sustainable or unsustainable) cultures and structures.

A ‘relational turn’ away from the predominance of mechanistic and essentialist paradigms has been proposed as a deep leverage point to enable more productive thinking, research, policies, and practices towards sustainability (West et al. 2020; Böhme et al. 2022). We organize the analysis of ‘relational turns’ experienced by Western-educated people participating in co-produced ayahuasca ceremonies along the three inner sustainability dimensions of the IMAGINE framework, namely ontological, epistemological and praxis (Ives et al. 2023). IMAGINE frames sustainability challenges as relational crises with deep roots, which require solutions ‘grounded in an ontology of interdependence and human potential and supported by expansive knowledge systems’ (Ives et al. 2023, p. 2783). West et al. (2020) argue that relational ontologies promote cognitive shifts that may include non-dualistic accounts of human-nature connectedness and the recognition of agency beyond humans. These cognitive shifts are a first step for deeper processes through which dominant ways of being and living can be transformed. We examine entheogens’ potential to connect individual and collective inner development to the outer transformations that lie at the heart of sustainability agendas.

Methods

This study applies a mixed methods approach to address the complexity of interactions that influence individuals’ potential embodiment of relationality and engagement with relational ontologies, epistemologies and praxis.

Participants

This study focused on English-speaking adults legally attending at least one Amazonian healing ceremony at the Takiwasi Center for the Rehabilitation of Drug Addicts and Research on Traditional Medicines in Peru. Takiwasi is a therapeutic community that was founded in 1992 and is formally recognized by the Peruvian Health Ministry (Mabit 2007; Rumlerová et al. 2021). With longstanding experience, Takiwasi’s approach combines Amazonian medicine with Western healthcare and psychotherapy, including a specific program on drugs and alcohol abuse. Treatments include ceremonies with a variety of plant medicines belonging to Amazonian traditions, including ayahuasca (Politi et al. 2018; Rumlerová et al. 2021).

As shown in Table 1, participants had diverse personal backgrounds and expressed many religious, spiritual, and personal beliefs. Similarly, as seen in Table 2, participants visited Takiwasi with different intentions and histories with ayahuasca and plant medicines in general. A previous study surveyed the initial motivations (intentionality) of 80 people attending the Takiwasi Center to participate in a specific therapeutic process (retreat-diet) that includes an ayahuasca ceremony. Results showed the main motivations were, in decreasing order of relevance: personal growth, spiritual growth, vocation, interest in traditional Amazonian medicine, and mental health (Rumlerová et al. 2021). The absence of prior intentionality to participate in ceremonies to reconnect with nature reinforces the relevance of our study’s results.

Table 1. Participants’ sociodemographic characteristics.

Sociodemographic characteristics		N	%
Age	Older than 50	25	34%
	40–50	24	32%
	30–40	18	24%
	Less than 30	7	9%
Ethnicity	White	39	53%
	Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin	16	22%
	Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin & White	5	7%
	Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin & Other	4	5%
Gender	Male	32	43%
	Female	25	34%
	Unspecified	18	24%
Religion	Not Religious; Not Specified	21	28%
	Catholic/Catholic Background	14	19%
	Spiritual	12	16%
	Christian	8	11%
	Religious; Not Specified	5	7%
	Animist/Nature	4	5%
	Orthodox	3	4%
	Buddhist	2	3%
	Amazonian cosmology	1	1%
	Daoist	1	1%
	Gnostic	1	1%
	Muslim	1	1%
	Red Road	1	1%
Home Environment	Urban Environment	45	61%
	Rural Environment	15	20%
	Suburban Environment	14	18%

Table 2. Participants’ History at Takiwasi & with traditional Amazonian medicine.

History at Takiwasi and with Ayahuasca		N	%
Purpose for attending Takiwasi	Participate in Ceremony	60	81%
	Attend rehabilitation treatment	10	14%
	Work and/or Conduct Research	4	5%
History with Ayahuasca	≥6 Occasions Attended solely at Takiwasi	38 5	52% 13%
	4–5 Occasions Attended solely at Takiwasi	11 4	15% 36%
	2–3 Occasions Attended solely at Takiwasi	13 9	18% 69%
	1 Occasion (solely at Takiwasi)	12	16%

Data collection

This study utilizes a mixed methods approach, including an online survey, semi-structured interviews and a focus group mirroring the discussion circles held after Ayahuasca ceremonies. In the broader Indigenous Studies literature this has resonance with ‘yarning circles’ practiced by Indigenous Australians to learn collectively through building respectful relationships (Dunleavy 2013). The survey was implemented first using Qualtrics Management Software, between December 2021 and February 2022. Participants were recruited through Takiwasi’s monthly newsletter, social media accounts and webpage. The survey was designed to gather participants’ demographic data and measure their connectedness to nature. 74 respondents finished the required portions of the survey and fit the inclusion criteria of this study. The survey consisted of 18 questions asking about demographic information and qualitative accounts of religious and spiritual practices, prior history with medicinal plants (particularly ayahuasca), and reflections on nature-relatedness. The survey also included the multidimensional AIMES scale (Meis-Harris et al. 2021). Items ranged from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree. Unlike other nature-relatedness scales, AIMES measures inner bonds with nature by building on the five types of nature connections outlined by Ives et al. (2018): attachment, identity, material, experiential, and spiritual.

To capture further details about participants’ experiences, survey respondents were invited to participate in a semi-structured interview. 62 (84%) people expressed interest in engaging with the study further, but only 11 individuals (18%) (Count: 6 self-identified as males & 5 as females) completed an interview. Interviews were conducted in English and on Zoom; both potentially limiting factors for engagement. Interviewees had attended Takiwasi either just a few months, or years ago. The 11 semi-structured Interviews were conducted by the second co-author between January and March of 2022. The longest interview was 89 minutes and the shortest was 35 minutes. The goal was to create a two-way conversation between the researcher and the interviewee (Adams 2015). Interview questions were primarily related to the connections between attending ceremonies, and changes in: (1) behavior, (2) opinions and beliefs, (3) identification with nature, (4) feelings about nature, (5) spirituality, (6) knowledge or awareness about nature, (7) sensory experiences and sensations, (8) social relationships and decisions, and (9) relationships to the planet and the future of our planet.

Interviewees were convened in November 2022 via Zoom for a discussion circle that followed the protocols commonly observed in ayahuasca ceremonies; wherein participants are often invited to share their experiences in circle under the guidance of the Shaman on the day following the ceremony. We came together as a community and discussed the perceived lasting effects of participating in ceremonies with ayahuasca and the correlation between personal healing processes and the ways we approach relationships and sustainability. All interviewees and four Non-indigenous experts on psychopharmacology and anthropology of plant medicines attended the circle. Three general questions were directed toward study participants followed by the experts’ commentary, bringing their experience and wisdom to the circle. Conversations were recorded and transcribed.

Data analysis & research question

Open-ended survey responses, interviews, and dialogue transcripts were inductively analyzed to find common themes and the resulting themes were then contrasted with the three inner sustainability dimensions of the IMAGINE framework: ontological, epistemological and praxis (Braun and Clarke 2006; Ives et al. 2023). Each dimension contains two core characteristics of inner-outer transformations. As developed by Ives et al. (2023, p. 2778), the ontological dimension is characterized by the ‘interdependence of inner/outer phenomena’ and ‘multiple latent human potential’; the epistemological dimension, by the ‘expansion of knowledge systems’ and ‘inclusion of diverse knowledges’; and the praxis dimension, by the ‘activation of inner dimensions’ and ‘generation of transformative capacities’. These core characteristics generally matched changes reported by participants.

After becoming familiar with the data, points of interest were identified and then codes were generated to represent each point. The identification of codes was guided by our main research question: ‘What role could co-produced ayahuasca ceremonies play in promoting inner-outer transformations towards sustainability?’. The data is not publicly available due to containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants. Research approval was sought and granted for this study.

Results

Five main themes emerged from participants’ accounts and reflections of their experiences with ayahuasca ceremonies: (1) increased nature-relatedness in a deeper spiritual sense, (2) engaging with relational thinking, (3) embodying relationality, (4) adopting relational ontologies, and (5) inner-outer transformations towards sustainability at the individual and collective level. We aligned the changes reported by participants within each theme and paired them up with one of the six core characteristics of inner – outer transformations of the IMAGINE framework (Ives et al. 2023). Table 3 synthesizes these relations.

Table 3. Plausible associations of participants’ reported changes to IMAGINE’s core characteristics of inner-outer transformations (Ives et al. 2023).

Theme	Changes reported by participants after ayahuasca co-produced ceremonies	IMAGINE’s core characteristic
Deeper sense of nature-relatedness	Altered perception of nature, seeing it as integral to their inner worlds	Interdependence of inner/outer phenomena
	Enhanced appreciation, deeper connection, and greater respect and understanding for human-other relationships	Multiple latent human potential
	Heightened sense of the intrinsic spirituality in their relationships with the natural world and nature	Inclusion of diverse knowledges
Relational thinking	Increased awareness of their reliance on non-relational ways of knowing	Expansion of knowledge systems
	Increased sense of connection with oneself, others, and nature	Multiple latent human potential
	Questioning that the human intellect is the only form of intelligence	Expansion of knowledge systems
	Both humans and plants are beings, rather than subjects versus objects	Interdependence of inner/outer phenomena
Embodying relationality	Perceiving connections between self-healing and the healing of social and ecological traumas	Interdependence of inner/outer phenomena
	Strengthened sense of relationship with one’s own body	Activation of inner dimensions
	Seeing their body as intrinsically connected to other living beings	Interdependence of inner/outer phenomena
Making room for relational ontologies	Questioning dominant materialist and essentialist ontologies	Inclusion of diverse knowledges
	Realizing that Ayahuasca is an animated being with agency and personhood instead of just an object or psychoactive substance	Interdependence of inner/outer phenomena
	Decreased sense of individuality as the main way of being in the world	Multiple latent human potential
Inner-outer transformation towards sustainability	Engaging in new social and professional activities that are more consistent with relational views	Generation of transformative capacities
	Engaging in more sustainable behaviors and lifestyle changes	Generation of transformative capacities
	Advocating for human-nature connectedness, Indigenous and plant knowledge, and relationality	Inclusion of diverse knowledges
	Developing more embodied and personalized perspectives of sustainability	Activation of inner dimensions
	Empowerment to enact changes in one’s own life	Generation of transformative capacities
	Moving to places where participants can increase their connection to nature and/or others	Generation of transformative capacities

Deeper sense of nature-relatedness

Most surveyed participants (96%) indicated that their experiences with ayahuasca ceremonies at Takiwasi altered their perception of nature towards seeing it as integral to their inner worlds.

How humans are integrated within the whole natural structure became very apparent … The natural world is not just out there as something that humans can control but it’s inside, it’s interconnected, and [it’s] pervading every aspect of everybody at all times.

About half (45%) provided additional thoughts on shift(s) perceived within themselves because of their participation in the ceremony.

Part of the realization that I had after the ayahuasca experience was that this dichotomy that people understandably construct between humans and nature is not really accurate because humans come from nature.

Some people also expressed that the ceremony helped them gain a greater appreciation, deeper connection, and greater respect and understanding of the relationship between humans and other forms of life.

This spirituality that I get to know through the plants … is very respectful to all beings, to the land, to the way we relate to each other, to myself, which is much deeper than the prayer that I can do today with tobacco and fire … I never had this level of connection in my prayers before … And even my yoga practice after plants became much more conscious.

There was a spiritual element to the enhanced sense of nature relatedness, not merely a material or cognitive one. 65% of participants indicated that the ceremonies had strengthened their sense of spirituality in the natural world.

I grew up as a Catholic … Today, the plants open a very spiritual part in me, which doesn’t have … any religion … This spirituality that I get to know through the plants … is very respectful to all beings, to the land, to the way we relate to each other, to myself.

The relevance of spiritual change was also supported by the relative scores between the five dimensions of nature-relatedness measured through the AIMES scale (Meis-Harris et al. 2021). Participants provided higher average scores for the spiritual dimension (average 4.6 out of 5) followed by attachment (4.25), experiential (4.01), identity (3.94); all much higher than the material dimension (2.07).

Free-text responses informed us that 66% of surveyed participants (Count: 49) had a routine spiritual practice involving elements of Indigenous ceremonial traditions, such as chanting/singing and dancing, as well as meditation (both in and out of nature), and journaling. Some had incorporated other medicinal plants, such as sacred tobacco, in meditation. Approximately half (47%) of the participants engaged with spiritual practices daily, 30% weekly, 17% occasionally, and 3% monthly.

In some cases, participants did not experience long-lasting transformations, as they felt a decline in connection after returning to daily routines. Findings from the AIMES scale show that the highest (77) and lowest (19) total scores belonged to individuals who had both participated in ayahuasca ceremonies more than 6 times. Accordingly, not all participants of ayahuasca ceremonies are affected equally, and the number of ceremonies was not directly correlated with an increase in nature-relatedness.

Relational thinking

Besides increasing nature-relatedness, the ceremonies also enabled relational thinking. Participants reflected on how ayahuasca made them aware of unexamined ways of knowing the world that may inadvertently cloud relationality.

Our language naturally separate things. The way we talk, we separate the inside from the outside, and the personal from the collective. By using words, we directly separate things and part of the understanding with ayahuasca is to bring into life the connection.

Relational thinking blurs essentialist distinctions between humans and nature, which are not only thought of as inter-connected but also as inter-penetrated (Kealiikanakaoleohaililani and Giardina 2016). This post-essentialist inter-penetration was reported by interviewees in different ways.

If you have this feeling that you are not alone, that is very healing in itself, because the problem, in a way it’s the disconnection, and I feel that ayahuasca is a way of reconnecting with ourselves, with others, with nature.

It has shown me the connection between our health and our environment’s health, and how we are in relation to other beings.

Relational thinking reframes agency away from purely cognitive-reflective abilities and expands it beyond the human (Watts 2013; West et al. 2020). This aspect of relational thinking was manifested in participants by challenging the belief that intelligence is exclusively human and questioning the dominance of the human intellect.

Before ayahuasca I had this mentality that humans are superior species … then I realized there are many forms of intelligence … I see nature now as a huge organism that is alive, thinking, and way smarter than us.

Together with recognizing some form of intelligence in plants or nature, interviewees shared animist perspectives by attributing spiritual agency to plants and other non-human beings.

[Plants] are very much alive and I discovered that recently. Not just like vegetables, but really as beings … you become aware that plants are a kind of spirit.

Embodiment of relationality

Intellectually realizing our intrinsic relationship with nature was only a first step for most participants before embodying it. Ceremonies played a crucial role in this process.

When we drink ayahuasca, […] we really switch from the mind to the body level. So, we really connect with different dimensions.

As the following quotes illustrate, embodying relationality often fostered self-healing, as well as the healing of social and ecological traumas:

There was really a moment where I understood the cellular level, and that I was able to change the information. And I remember asking her [Mother Ayahuasca] to change it, and she told me: ‘No, it’s you who must change it’. You have the power, and you’ve always had this power.

What we learn is that what we change in ourselves, it’s not for us. It’s energetically for everybody. We are even supporting the world as it comes down with wars, with dramatic changes, with the so many things falling down, but we keep in prayer like sustaining somehow energetically everything that is happening by sustaining yourself.

Embracing relationality involved strengthening relationships with one’s own body and seeing the body as intrinsically connected to other living beings.

I think that the main issue with how humans treat other humans and how humans treat nature is their relation to their body. And most people have a very crude relationship to the body. They don’t realize […] the sacredness of the body and mind together.

The plant really helps to take consciousness of many things. I’ve been really feeling in my body the treatment of animals, our patterns in the way we eat, how we use the energy.

Making room for relational ontologies

Questioning materialist and essentialist onto-epistemologies while allowing relational ones to flourish was the deepest and most consequential transformation.

[Ayahuasca] broadened my perspective of what the natural world really is.

It’s that recognition of intelligence, of spirit, of consciousness in a world of subjects, not of objects, […] if we are embedded in the world of subjectivity, everything changes in our personal life, in our relationship with other people, in the relationship with nature, with everything.

A revealing sign that participants had made room for relational ontologies is the generalized assumption that the ayahuasca is an animated being with agency and personhood.

I started a relationship with Ayahuasca, a friendship, with no idea of what was going to happen. I think Ayahuasca came to me, or maybe I went to her. […] Now I’m thinking that Ayahuasca found me […] I feel today Ayahuasca is next to me or inside me, even though it’s been four years since my last ceremony.

Throughout the whole session ayahuasca was speaking to me.

In establishing relational ontologies, the core aspects of human experience and identity were challenged including egoism and self-awareness though ego-dissolution.

During the ceremony I experienced the so-called ego death. And to me that was an incredible experience because I come from a culture where the individual and the ego is very validated. This idea of complete independence and distancing yourself and just focusing on yourself is the norm, and for me to experience this wholeness and to realize that I, singular, do not exist was incredible.

A significant consequence of questioning egocentrism and individualism was concluding that we are as a matter of fact at the service of nature.

Just to feel a sort of servant of nature. My body, physical energetic body, whatever it is, is just a medium, because in a way, nature is entering and using my body to communicate.

However, this questioning did not necessarily mean erasing individuality.

I think it’s important to acknowledge how complex we are as humans, […] connection is of course part of it, but also the individual work of knowing ourselves, knowing our history, or knowing who I am, to build a story [of] why I’m here, what I want.

The evidence brought forward suggests that the ceremonial use of ayahuasca can act as an enabler of ontological shifts. It is important to note, though, that ceremonial elements, particularly quiet periods of deprivation and relative solitude, being immersed in the forest, the Takiwasi community, and Indigenous culture and wisdom enhanced and guided these ontological shifts. Meditation and breathing were common practices and several interviewees explained that these practices helped them to silence their inner dialogue to open up and process the outcome from the ceremonies. This confirms the key role played by ‘setting’ in shaping the outcome of psychedelic experiences (Pollan 2019).

Inner-outer transformations towards sustainability

For most participants, the ceremonial experience triggered inner-outer transformations, often expressed as a life-long process of integrating inner changes into daily lives. Some noted that they had attended Takiwasi many years ago but were still processing and integrating the lessons that emerged for them. All interviewees expressed the desire to return to Takiwasi if they could, but would not do so until they felt they had fully integrated previous learnings. Sustainability transformations were generally seen as linked to these long-term inner-outer processes of integration.

This energy that is underneath all our feelings and all our emotions is the energy of nature that we share with everything […]. And going to that place is for me the way to somehow look for sustainability.

Almost all interviewees reported that their ayahuasca experiences facilitated changes in self-perception, which in turn influenced similar changes in close friends and family. Additionally, many interviewees reported shifts in their friend groups and priorities regarding social engagements.

I don’t do the same things. […] Plants [are] not compatible with my old way of life.

Participants also expressed that their experiences led to increased feelings of ‘respect’, ‘courage’, ‘confidence’, and ‘calmness’, and triggered vocational changes. A few switched to therapy-based occupations. Many interviewees expressed that their feelings toward humanity and current environmental challenges had changed after their experiences with ayahuasca. For instance, by increasing their awareness of nature’s resilience.

I have so much more trust in the wellbeing of nature … Humans may disappear from this world, but nature will continue … Human civilization may perhaps disappear … but Earth will continue and will thrive even if we destroy most of it …

Moreover, participants indicated that they developed more sustainable behaviors as a result of their experiences. For instance, one participant noted that they transitioned away from using most beauty products as they are often laden with toxic-chemicals. Another interviewee who claimed that he was not an ‘environmentalist’, detailed the plans he and his partner have for promoting and preserving nature. Two of them claimed to have experienced a change in their sensitivity towards global challenges resulting from their participation in ceremonies.

As participants reflected on their own transformations, there was a strong desire to advocate for human-nature connectedness, Indigenous knowledge, plant knowledge, and relationality. For some, sustainability transformations were seen as intrinsically linked to a broader cultural change through which more people will engage in ‘relational turns’.

I think that the real healing is connection. And the problems of civilization are the problems of disconnection with others, with nature, the world, with everything.

As you make a change in your life, it affects the decisions that other people make in their lives. […] everybody’s connected, in a certain sense, if one falters in a certain sense, then it affects every other node within the community. The same thing with the opposite is true as well, […] you can strengthen the other nodes that you’re connected with.

For others, deepening and embodying relational values led to changes in their understanding of sustainability.

I have a strange health condition, which is extreme thirst at night. It’s kind of diabetes, and I really connected with the thirst of the Earth. It is hard to explain it, but I just saw this extreme dryness and these animals struggling. And I could see this basically in my stomach and in my system. And it was in precisely this year which we experienced a very long drought. […] and when I came out of the session it even started raining. Not much, but it did rain, and it was months that it didn’t. This impacted me.

I believe a nice way to contribute to sustainability is somehow to learn how to clean my emotions from the most mundane feelings. They can create more pure energy and contribute to society, to build a better environment, a better social environment. And from that you can expect also changes in people, in behavior, in the way people value different elements from nature.

However, for most participants, inner-outer sustainability transformations through ayahuasca ceremonies were perceived in terms of lifestyle changes.

It’s important that what we learn during the experience doesn’t just stay in the space of the ceremony. We can do small changes in our daily life. And I really see today my life […] is a total switch, […], and the kids also see this way of living that is much more respectful with Mother Earth, and I think this is really coming from consciousness that the plant is opening somehow.

The biggest challenge is this lifestyle, where, from the minute we wake up, from the coffee we drink, how we get to work, everything we do is in a state of domination. It’s not a reciprocity with the natural world, and I really struggle to slow down, feel this reciprocity for this relational aspect. Because our whole life is constructed on domination, at least my life, what I do. As much as I work towards the environment and environmental projects, in the end I dominate every day.

It was also perceived that the effects of ayahuasca were considered to enhance relationality, potentially encouraging political action and change towards sustainability transformations.

I believe that the true thing that disables people from making a change, either in their life or in the whole world is the belief that they don’t have the power, that the power comes from the exterior. […] The plant does not give you power. The plant helps you realize that the power has always been in you; that all that you need has always been in you; that everything in your life is just based upon a choice that you can make, and it’s a choice that you can make at any time … about being at the service of nature.

Drinking ayahuasca allows you to shut down the rational aspect of your mind, […] you start to feel in a different way life around you. And even a rock is becoming alive. And if you feel something with somebody or something else, can be a river or can be a tree, well, you will fight to protect this being and that’s probably a good way to stay connected. So ayahuasca is a good ecological tool.

We can create a green deal or whatever, but using the very same mindset, we [will] never solve the problem. We should find a way to insert the chip of animism in the bureaucratic aspect of our culture. And ayahuasca in this sense, I think, is doing a lot.

Most surveyed participants (61%) reported that their experiences with ayahuasca facilitated them to consider moving to a new location (34% did move). Only 5% had not considered it. Some expressed that the urban and suburban environments in which they lived felt too chaotic, loud, and smelly, and that being closer to nature would be better for their health and wellbeing. Following the ceremonies, some interviewees moved to rural environments to live off-grid or in more community-oriented settings.

I felt at some point that I couldn’t live in big cities anymore. I really needed to be close to nature […]. This house that I built here is totally our construction, it’s all with the earth and wood, and I started planting a green garden. I have dry toilets, which is very safe. We use compost here in the community as well. All the pipes that we use in the house are going straight to water the plants and we exchange when we get food here with the neighbors. I think this is really coming from the ayahuasca experience.

After I started having ayahuasca … it totally changed my feelings [about] big cities … It’s very relaxing for the mind to be surrounded by nature … I live in a community with the kids playing with no mask in nature, and this is very healthy for everybody.

One reason for not feeling the need to relocate was because the person already lived near nature. Another participant who lived in nature experienced the opposite effect after the ceremony: he felt more attracted to the social connections offered by urban settings.

I came back to a very rural community, […] I felt quite attracted to living in a larger city at that point, and part of the realization that I had after the ayahuasca experience was that being around other humans is like being around nature because humans are a product of nature […] For each one of us the connection can express in different ways. […] What matters is how this connection is getting nourished for each one of us as its expression can take many different forms.

Another reason for not moving included responsibilities and attachments to professional or social life. Only four people had not thought about moving environments after their experiences with ayahuasca. For some, the increased sense of relatedness manifested through an ‘inward move’.

In the last two years, I haven’t felt the need to be surrounded [by] natural landscapes or to be in specific places that we call nature. Now I feel that nature is inside me … If I want some of it, I just go inside.

Overall, participants reported that ayahuasca ceremonies enabled inner transformations towards incorporating relationality at different levels of their being and experience. These levels included but went beyond an increase in nature-relatedness. They entailed changes in ways of thinking, awareness of bodily sensations, and new perceptions of what exists. Inner transformations were associated by participants to outer transformations, including ways of interacting with others and the environment, personal decisions, lifestyles, or behaviors. The fundamental and enduring character of these inner changes supports the speculation that co-produced ayahuasca ceremonies may constitute a deep leverage point towards relationality and sustainability.

Discussion

The nascent relational turn in sustainability, along with the associated field of inner transformations, is opening a door to exploring the links between the entheogenic uses of psychedelics and sustainability transformations (Nilsson and Stålhammara 2024). We found that co-produced ayahuasca ceremonies affected participants’ relational view of reality and the quality of their relationships with themselves, others, and non-humans. This suggests a potential role for ayahuasca in the transformations towards sustainability that current generations need to urgently realize. In fact, participants reported multiple inner changes at the ontological, epistemological and praxis levels. Each inner change can be reasonably associated with at least one of the six core characteristics of the IMAGINE framework (Table 3; Ives et al. 2023).

The principles and practices of relationality, which sustainability science is starting to acknowledge as key for transformation, have, in fact, been at the center of many Indigenous knowledge systems (Gallegos-Riofrio et al. 2022). Indigenous relational onto-epistemologies entail non-optional responsibilities and obligations to care for and engage with the perpetuation of life (Gould et al. 2023). Cree scholar Shawn Wilson (2008) conceptualizes relationality as the acknowledgement that we all exist in relationship to each other, the natural world, ideas, the cosmos, objects, ancestors, and future generations; and that we are accountable to those relationships. Our study suggests that Amazonian healing practices can push Western-educated individuals, and perhaps our global culture, toward embodying and embracing the type of relationality described by Shawn Wilson and other Indigenous scholars.

Our findings reveal that the special effects of ayahuasca come from becoming more aware of connections and forming an intimate bond with the plant, which is seen as having its own thoughts and intentions. This subjectivation of the plant suggests that participants adopted, or at least seriously considered, what anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro describes as ‘Amerindian ontologies’. In the Indigenous Amazonian model of the self, animals and spirits are all considered people, sharing with humans a common reflexive selfhood, even though humans and non-humans diverge in their material appearance: ‘nonhuman beings are supposed to have a spiritual component that qualifies them as “people”’ (Viveiros De Castro 2019, p. 23). A recent Western philosophy resonating with Amerindian ontologies is analytical idealism; where matter is seen as part of mind, and not vice versa (Kastrup 2019; Popovič 2023). Therefore, ayahuasca may encourage Western-educated people to embrace and embody animist, idealist, and other fundamentally relational ways of perceiving and being in the world. Scholarship on inner-outer transformations to sustainability is starting to recognize Indigenous ontologies and the need to consider the voice, agency, personhood, and soulfulness of nature (Artmann 2023; Müller et al. 2023). Cooper et al. (2024) propose addressing the sustainability metacrisis by focusing on everyone’s ‘journey’ of coming into relationship with the more-than-human world. In the following, we discuss our findings along the principles of inner-outer transformations synthesized by the IMAGINE framework (see Table 3).

Ontology

In the ontological dimension, inner transformation is grounded in relational views of reality that recognize both inner-outer interdependence and entanglement, and humans’ fundamental potential for connection and positive change for sustainability (Ives et al. 2023).

Our findings show an increase in the recognition of inner-outer interdependence and entanglement with nature. As participants engaged with traditional Amazonian medicine, they became more aware of their intimate connection with nature by recognizing, feeling, and communicating with plants, animals, and the cosmos. This intimate connection also triggered a sense of ego-dissolution, and vice-versa. Consuming ayahuasca during ceremony provided a mode and an opportunity to experience nature as made up of animated subjects, instead of inert objects (Dev 2018; Viveiros De Castro 2019). In participants’ experiences, plants, humans, and all beings were sensed as sharing common roots and being able to communicate emotionally and spiritually, learn from each other, and even help each other immaterially. Recognizing plants as spiritual beings assisted in formulating the understanding that humans are not the only beings to hold personhood and agency.

As participants’ understanding of agency expanded, their own sense of agency and ability to change themselves and the world also expanded (Avelino 2017). Moreover, as more layers of reality were exposed, participants found that they were actively discovering and curating these realities, of which they were an integral part. This process can be related to the idea of psycho-cultural transformations to sustainability (Berzonsky and Moser 2017). The value and empathy that many participants placed on the physical and spiritual manifestations of nature were correlated with their desire to live, or feel, closer to nature. Some participants linked their embodiment of relationality to the increased empowerment they felt as agents of change. Acknowledging inner dimensions of sustainability may assist individuals in reflecting upon and questioning widely accepted perspectives and views that are at the root of unsustainability. Our findings show that the use of ayahuasca in co-produced ceremonial settings assists individuals in challenging Euro-centric ontologies based on separation.

Epistemology

In the epistemological dimension, Ives et al. (2023) emphasize the inclusion of diverse perspectives, which are required for the expansion of related knowledge systems.

Ceremonial practices with ayahuasca at Takiwasi were reported to produce a relational turn in participants’ ways of thinking. This turn was supported by questioning substantialist and materialist assumptions. In one of her notable works, Meadows (1999) illustrated that the most effective intervention in a system is the ability to discard previously held beliefs while acknowledging the wisdom, depth, and diversity of varying perspectives. Embodiment was also key because linear logic and the rational mind can only partially grasp relational ways of knowing. As discussed by Wilson (2008), relational thinking requires more intuitive forms of logic to look at the whole systems of relationships in which we are embedded and to which we are accountable.

Epistemological flexibility required the ‘shedding’ of previously acquired ‘layers of knowledge’ that no longer served participants, making room for relational ways of thinking (Latulippe and Klenk 2020). This has been described in sustainability as the ‘capacity to transcend entrenched boundaries and limits’ that gets us to the ‘heart of transformation’ (Vogel and O’Brien 2022, p. 653). By shedding outdated layers, participants experienced a removal of the ‘veils’ that had previously separated them from alternative ways of knowing, including Indigenous knowledge. Thus, taking participants into a pathway for ‘peaceful co-existence of epistemologies’ (Goodchild 2021). Ayahuasca ceremonies provided them with meaningful insights into psychological or emotional states related to connections between self, spirit, and nature and therefore facilitated a ‘reconnection’ or ‘recalibration’ between them. Participants were led to these inner transformations using ayahuasca, but also noted the importance of Indigenous wisdom and ceremonial elements, particularly such as quiet periods of deprivation and relative solitude, being immersed in the forest and amongst community, and plant dietas.

Praxis

In the sustainability praxis dimension, inner-outer transformation includes the outcomes of changes in mindsets, behavior, culture and systems (Abson et al. 2017; Wamsler et al. 2021). Sustainability praxis includes both activating and generating inner transformative capacities through intentional practices (Manuel-Navarrete et al. 2019). Ceremonial practices with ayahuasca at Takiwasi were reported to produce a relational turn in participants’ ways of engaging with the world. Interviewees linked the ceremonial consumption of ayahuasca to inside-out changes in lifestyles, life trajectories, and perspectives on sustainability. Taking part in an ayahuasca ceremony helped some interviewees understand their roles in sustainability transformations not with the mind, but by feeling it and ‘being’ one with it. A heightened sense of relationality fostered pro-environmental behaviors, including changes in addictive consumption of alcohol, drugs, toxic chemicals, and material goods. Participants were generally more inclined to enjoy and spend time in nature or with others and to live in local communities. The fact that most participants considered or decided to move away from urban settings was one of the most unexpected and significant findings from the survey and interviews. While sustainability transformations are often focused on outward efforts, our findings show that inner-outer links are critical to ‘process’ and turn inner transformations into enduring outer changes (Koenig et al. 2023; Cooper et al. 2024). The ability to let go of what is known and explore the unknown ultimately strengthened participants’ inner-outer transformative capacities.

Implications for the relational turn in sustainability

In their seminal paper, West et al. (2020) concluded that sustainability science remains captive to substantialist assumptions, biases towards distinct ‘human’ and ‘natural’ entities, and dualistic accounts of human-nature connectedness that do not reflect the complexity of human experience. Building on these conclusions, Gould et al. (2023) advocated for deeper understandings of Indigenous relational thinking and practice in sustainability science and in wider conversations about values across societies. Our findings suggest that the entheogenic use of ayahuasca in ceremonial spaces co-produced with Indigenous knowledge holders, may promote a more fundamental understanding and embodiment of relationality amongst Western-educated individuals. In our case study this fundamental understanding reflected very closely the three elements of Indigenous relationality highlighted by Gould et al. (2023): reciprocity with non-humans, living in balance, and caring for the flourishing of all our relationships. Examining the experiences of participants in these ceremonies can provide insights on how to advance the embodiment of the ‘relational turn’ by sustainability scientists as well as more generally. At the same time, sustainability science can contribute to the design of co-produced ceremonial spaces catered to Western-educated individuals with the goal of boosting inner-outer transformations to sustainability.

Limitations

We acknowledge that we approach this research from a western-scientific positionality and privilege. Our findings are limited by a relatively small sample size focused on self-selected Western-educated White or Latino participants with the capacity to travel to Peru. We received more interest in this study than we had the capacity to support due to language barriers and time constraints. We hope that our findings will motivate further sustainability research, involving larger and more diverse samples, on the transformational potential of ayahuasca co-produced ceremonies.

Conclusion

This study adds to the growing body of research on the nexus between psychedelics, human-nature connectedness, and inner-outer transformations to sustainability (Nilsson and Stålhammara 2024). Ayahuasca ceremonies co-produced between Indigenous and Western knowledges may aid Western-educated individuals to re-connect with non-human worlds. In exploring the transformative nature of plant medicines, we draw attention to the value of Indigenous knowledges shared through traditional ceremonial and ritualistic practices (Langdon 2017; Politi et al. 2018). Indigenous cultures are widely recognized as custodians of biodiversity, as long as they continue generating and utilizing traditional ecological knowledge for achieving sustainability. However, Western scholarship often evaluates the knowledge associated with ayahuasca from a reductionistic biomedical, or mental health perspective (Maia et al. 2023). The present study expands this perspective by examining the role of ayahuasca in inner-outer transformations to sustainability.

Our research provides one situated example where a particular intercultural ceremonial practice is leading to changes within a Western-educated group of visitors to Peru. We found that ceremonial use of ayahuasca facilitated deep and sustained changes in study participants’ relationships with non-human beings. Moreover, engaging with ayahuasca during ceremonial practices helped them to break down the barriers between self, spirit, and nature through embracing relational ontologies, epistemologies, and praxis. Epistemologically, participants developed relational understandings of the world as their boundaries of knowledge production either expanded or became more inclusive. Ontologically, inner transformations and the expansion of individual’s worldviews fostered new ways of relating and being, and these new relationships facilitated, at the level of praxis, actions towards more conscious-centered and less materialistic ways of being in the world. These findings are consistent with the dimensions and core characteristics of inner-outer transformations described by Ives et al. (2023). Consequently, ayahuasca ceremonies need to be further explored as tools and means to accelerate inner-outer pathways towards sustainability.

Ayahuasca has been used for centuries by Indigenous cultures for spiritual and healing purposes. In recent years, it has gained popularity in Western cultures as a tool for personal growth and self-discovery. This study shows that ayahuasca can also help promote social transformations towards a more sustainable future by fostering empathy and interconnectedness, as well as assisting individuals in gaining a greater understanding and appreciation of the more-than-human world. However, it is important to note that the effects of ayahuasca can vary widely from person to person and that more research is needed to fully understand the (mind-)sets and settings that can enable personal and social transformations. The sustainability of the plant, the forests where it grows, and the Indigenous biocultures that are generously sharing their ancestral practices and knowledge need further, careful, and respectful recognition. Additionally, it is important to approach the use of ayahuasca in conjunction with supportive practices, such as meditation or nature immersion, and under the guidance of people trained in Amazonian healing practices and other relevant knowledges.

Ayahuasca ceremonies are now offered all around the world (Tupper 2009), and they are reaching a broader set of participants. Our findings suggest that this could have a large transformative impact towards sustainability if the ceremonial spaces are effectively co-produced between Indigenous and other forms of knowledge. In turn, sustainability research could assist with the design of more ‘horizontally’ co-produced spaces (Manuel-Navarrete et al. 2021). Horizontal co-production is key to ensure that ceremonial spaces are mutually beneficial for both Indigenous, and Non-indigenous peoples. Sustainability research can also contribute to co-create tools that facilitate the processing and integration of the ceremonial experience so that inner transformations are sustained and are effectively translated into outer transformations towards global sustainability.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).