IBOGA AND HEALING FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
We are more susceptible to patterning between the ages of 1 and 7 than any other time in our lives. This is a period of childhood when we are relating to our world and to those around us. The people in our lives teach us how to be, how to react, and how to cope. Our environment shapes how we view the rest of the world, and what to expect from it. And if any of these elements are toxic, we experience childhood trauma. While we may not realize the depth of how this trauma has affected our own life until we are in late-adulthood, it eventually rises up to show itself.
TYPES OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
– Bad Parenting
– Hyper-Critical Parents
– Appearance- or Performance-Based Measures of Success
– Untruthful Belief Systems
– Religious Influence
– Physical Abuse
– Mental/Emotional/Verbal Abuse
– Sexual Abuse
– Neglect
– Exposure to Unstable Home Environment/Drug Use/Domestic Violence
– Exposure to Poverty/Crime/Community Violence
– Bullying
– Medical Trauma
– Refugee Trauma
– Natural Disaster Trauma
– Traumatic, Death-Related Grief
HOW CAN IBOGA HELP CHILDHOOD TRAUMA?
What we have experienced in childhood is stored energetically in the subconscious. It is a holding pattern — with coping mechanisms attached — which is ignited via various triggers throughout our lives.
Most times, our traumas are so painful, that they remain buried without awareness — or other times through conscious denial — in order to protect ourselves and ‘get through’ our lives without reliving the heaviness of our past experiences. We often, as adults, distract ourselves from the negative feelings associated with our traumas through using street drugs or alcohol, agreeing to being on long-term pharmaceutical medications to suppress our feelings, becoming workaholics, surrounding ourselves with other people constantly, gambling, use sleeping pills to avoid nightmares/night terrors/insomnia, watching television or gaming, engaging in negative or unhealthy sexual behaviors, overeating/partaking in anorexic or bulimic tendencies, excessively working out, or other coping mechanisms and ways of distracting ourselves from the truth of what we’ve been through.
Often, we’ve even tried out periods where we’ve attempted to look at our pain and work through it — with 12 step programs, psychotherapy, shared trauma-related support groups, and possibly even other plant medicines.
But why do our traumas continue to haunt us?
It’s because we’re tapping at the door of our traumatic experience, but we’re wavering at the threshold — not stepping courageously through the doorway. And this is okay — we often are incapable of passing through the door to healing. Sometimes, it takes the intelligence and guidance of a Master Teacher like Iboga to facilitate this monumental step. Iboga is unlike any other plant medicine in its capacity to help us heal.
Iboga teaches us that the only way out is through. The only way to heal our pain is to walk directly into its fire, to confront, acknowledge, accept, and thus release it.
The energy of Iboga is unique when compared with other plants. Those who have experienced it will likely say that it is the most powerful plant teacher they’ve experienced — in the way that it does not allow you to run from your pain. It forces us to work through the pain so that it no longer has hold of us.
This plant is direct. Its journey is challenging. But Iboga is a very potent tool to overcome trauma. When nothing else has worked, and we continue to struggle in our lives without the ability to reach peace, acceptance and fulfillment, when the blocks are still there and we’re unable to break through them, Iboga is powerful enough to help us facilitate our liberation. Do we really just want to ‘get through’ life? Or do we want to thrive?
If we deeply long to thrive, grow, and enjoy our lives, Iboga is a true solution.
While the mere mention of Iboga often initiates fear and resistance from those who are unwilling to actually deal with their pain, for those of us who are sick and tired of operating in repeating negative behaviour and thought patterns, we immediately recognize, on an energetic level, that it is the answer we’ve been seeking.
It’s how you know you’re truly ready for an Iboga experience — when the knowledge that it will not be easy, and that fear is attached to the journey, is not as strong as our conviction to finally heal and enjoy our lives.
This is the major difference in whether Iboga will work with us, or will not. The medicine shows up only for those who show up for themselves. If you truly want to heal, Iboga will truly help facilitate that healing. Alternatively, if others in your life encourage our push you into an Iboga ceremony when you’re not quite ready, Iboga will not show up as a master healer.
You have to want it for yourself, 100%.
Thousands of humans have now experienced the incredible healing power of Iboga — for all of the aforementioned types of childhood traumas, and more. And we notice that the heaviest cases of trauma, when met with the intelligence and challenge of healing with this plant, result in the most free-spirited healing potential, ability to change, and to understand why these things have happened to us — to push us on our perfect paths.
There is always a choice in trauma. Stay victimized, repeat old patterns, and continue the cycle of negative experiences. Or, transcend the ‘negative’ experience into what it was always meant to be — the exact push needed to propel us into a true, purpose-driven life.
We want to underscore the importance of it being okay to feel stuck right now, where you are, in the patterning. Many of our providers once felt the same way, regarding our own traumas. We tried modality after modality, attempting to step through the threshold of healing into the freedom of who we’re meant to be and what we’re meant to do in this life — without success.
It’s why we’ve dedicated our lives to Iboga. Because, for us, it was the only thing powerful enough to illuminate the truth — that we have everything we need inside of us already to heal. But sometimes, it just takes a light bright enough to shine on what has been consumed by the shadows.