Anomalous experiences reported during Umbanda rituals—whether or not ayahuasca is used—share core similarities, including reduced voluntary motor control, altered memory and perception, changes in communicability and accessibility of experiences, reception of anomalous information, and heightened interpersonal sensitivity. The study used an auto-ethnographic approach to compare individuals with different levels of involvement in mediumistic practices. The findings support autoethnography as a feasible research tool for investigating subjective experiences that are difficult to study with other methods, and suggest that the phenomenological characteristics of these experiences are similar regardless of ayahuasca use.
Therapists' own subjective experiences, particularly their en-active emotional responses, play a crucial, underrecognized role in systemic therapy. Using micro-phenomenological interviews with six therapists, the study found that en-active emotionality is an invariant feature of the therapist's subjectivity, functioning as an intelligent motivation that continuously monitors and guides the therapeutic process within the intersubjective relationship. This suggests that traditional research has undervalued these emotions and that improving therapy quality involves not only recognizing but also cultivating this invariant.
Ayahuasca, a psychoactive drink from the Amazon, has been used ritually for millennia and gained global religious use in the 1980s. Biomedical studies have found it safe and linked to physical and mental wellbeing. This research investigated life histories of people with therapeutic itineraries involving ritual ayahuasca use, using a phenomenological-existential and gestalt-therapy approach. The findings suggest that ritual experiences and therapeutic journeys helped participants recognize health as a posture of maturity or wisdom in relation to their world, with ayahuasca enabling re-significations in daily self-care and self-love.