‘A teacher helping me with homework was studying psychology, and asked me many intelligent questions. That’s when I became curious about psychology. I specialized in drug addiction, then psychoanalysis and dream interpretation, transactional analysis, then transpersonal psychology.

‘I once left my body, and saw myself from the outside. I started researching, and found that you can do such things in trance states. I learned hypnosis and holotropic breathwork. I was using hypnosis to explore my clients’ past lives, but sometimes they instead went into some other dimension or planet, and I realized then that there are such worlds.

‘I went into the Amazon to work with shamans. On ayahuasca, the jungle spoke to me telepathically, and asked me to help it. I was in awe. Each time I drank it, I saw a probable future, and focused on it.

‘Ayahuasca is trance. When you drink it, you communicate with a sentient entity. In my opinion, everything has a cause in the spiritual realm, that materializes in the body. I help people enter into a light trance to see the spiritual causes of their problems.’

Silvia Polivoy, PhD, is co-founder and facilitator at the Spirit Vine Ayahuasca retreat center in Brazil, where I went last year. She is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who has worked in psychoanalysis, transactional therapy, transpersonal approaches, spiritual methods, meditation, group therapy, hypnosis, past-life regression, Jungian archetypes, and holotropic breathwork. She studied psilocybin mushrooms with Mazatec shamans in Mexico, the San Pedro cactus, and ayahuasca in the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon. Many leaders in consciousness studies have joined her retreats, including Rick Doblin, founder and president of MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), and psychedelic artist Alex Grey. At her ayahuasca retreats, Silvia led us through group workshops such as regression to the inner child, going to the root cause of traumas, understanding the victim mindset, cancelling unconscious contracts, reconnecting with our power, breaking soul ties, and releasing negative attachments from our body.

We begin this conversation by talking about Silvia’s ADD, her strange intuitions as a child, how she became interested in psychology, and about being a conscious medium. I ask about my lack of visions on ayahuasca. Can someone get better from an ayahuasca experience even without vision and insight? What is the future of the relation between human and nature? We talk about past and future lives and their connection with ayahuasca. Are there cases where ayahuasca can amplify someone’s ego, or harm them?