It’s amazing what can happen when you step outside your comfort zone and answer the call of ayahuasca for deep healing and spiritual transformation. In this powerful conversation, Michael Unbroken sits down with ayahuasca guide and retreat leader Yasha Shah to unpack what really happens in the medicine space – beyond the hype, beyond the biohacking, and beyond the Instagram retreats.

You’ll hear Yasha’s raw story of battling depression, ADHD and desperation, trying everything from psychiatry to Reiki before finally traveling to Peru for a 21‑day immersive ayahuasca experience that changed his life – and then seemed to “stop working” when old patterns returned months later. After losing about 2.5 million dollars in the stock market and facing his own dark night of the soul, Yasha went back out into the world, spending a year in Nepal and India searching for gurus in the Himalayas, only to realize that no one else could save him – and that true healing demanded a different kind of spiritual honesty and responsibility.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What ayahuasca is and how Indigenous Amazonians discovered and combined specific plants like ayahuasca and chacruna to create the medicine, against impossible odds in a jungle of tens of thousands of species.
• How tribes in Peru and Colombia understand trauma as “soul loss” – and why they use ayahuasca not only for healing, but also for hunting, finding medicine plants, communicating with ancestors, and navigating the spiritual world, including the darker side of brujeria and energetic attacks.
• Why many Western seekers focus only on DMT, the default mode network and “inner child work,” while Indigenous healers emphasize spiritual and energetic dimensions that can’t be reduced to brain science alone.

Michael also shares his own firsthand experience drinking ayahuasca with Shipibo healers in a small group with multiple shamans and dedicated facilitators, including one night where he felt the crushing weight of every soul’s energy in the room until a shaman performed an intense energetic clearing with tobacco, blessed water and song that changed everything in an instant. As a self‑described rational, skeptical, Type‑A personality, Michael breaks down why this ceremony shattered his disbelief and opened him to a deeper understanding of plant medicine and spiritual reality.

If you’re curious about:

• Ayahuasca for depression, trauma and spiritual healing
• How to think about safety, lineage and integrity when choosing a retreat or shaman
• The real difference between quick‑fix “biohacking” and long‑term, spiritually grounded healing

…this conversation will give you grounded insight from both a skeptical entrepreneur and a student‑turned‑guide who has lived this path across Peru, Colombia, Nepal and India.

Watch until the end for practical reflections on how to approach ayahuasca responsibly, what questions to ask before you sit with any facilitator, and why some people don’t get lasting results – plus what might be missing in their healing process from a spiritual and energetic perspective.