Motherhood and Mushrooms: How Psychedelics Shaped Mama Ayana Iyi’s Parenting Journey
Artem SmirnovWe met with Mama Ayana in San Francisco during Spirituality and Beyond 2024 (organized by the Church of Ambrosia). Mama Ayana is the wife of the legendary Kilindi Iyi. In this interview she discusses conscious parenting and her approach to open family dialogue about sacred plant medicine. She shares personal insights about mindful use during pregnancy and nursing, while emphasizing responsible practices and the importance of preserving traditional wisdom.
The mushrooms open you up so you can say YES to new life and not NO to life.
-Mama Ayana Iyi
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Tell us about your own personal deep inner work with mushrooms
Eating the mushrooms just changed the trajectory of my life. This pure love that I felt, I’ve never felt anything like that before.
Mama Ayana Iyi: So my husband gave me five grams, 25 years ago and that was my first dose. And he said, here, I’m like, well, what is it? He was like mushrooms. I’m like, well, where’s the pizza at? You know, but he didn’t give me any kind of information or knowledge. He’s just like, eat this baby.
Eating the mushrooms just changed the trajectory of my life. This pure love that I felt, I’ve never felt anything like that before. It was just something that took over my entire being and I knew that there was so much more to life than getting up going to work, punching in, coming home, kicking the dog, feeding the kids.
It was just so much more and I wanted more of that so the mushrooms just kind of helped strip away the illusions of what this is. You know like trying to chase the money and always get it the more you chase it the more elusive it becomes so it let me know that that wasn’t the key, but mind manifesting was the key, and we know that that’s what psychedelics mean, mind manifesting.
So that changed me in the sense of, I want to know more, but I want to give what I know. I wanted everybody to hear what I had to say. You know, I was excited and I see the young people now going through this, that they’re so excited and I just want to feed that energy
How did mushrooms help you become a better mother?
So in terms of a better mother, it just led me to not bullshit my kids to tell them the truth.
Mama Ayana Iyi: So in terms of a better mother, it just led me to not bullshit my kids to tell them the truth. You know, if you’re old enough to ask me, then you’re old enough to give to take what I’m giving you.
And to listen from another place, not of that whatever that sternness, but opening myself up and allowing them to speak. My son, when he was 11, he said, mama, I really appreciate you telling me the truth about this whole Santa thing. He said, I just really appreciate that.
So in terms of bringing our babies forward now. These Children are amazingly bright as we see. They have to be because we’re in this age of technology. I mean, they come out the womb and know how to do the thing, you know, but we want our babies to be strong enough to deal with what’s coming. Okay, because it’s coming. You could feel it coming.
We think that they will be they will be consciously more aware of the energy that’s around them If we give them mushrooms while they’re in the womb, if we are giving birth through the psychedelic experience. Because you hear a lot of women who are in labor who say no, no, oh, no, oh, you know, say yes, allow this process to happen and the mushrooms open you up so that you can say yes to it.
And then through the breastfeeding process. I’m not saying you gonna be on a macro trip and feeding your baby, you know, little stuff flying around, but microdosing. You know, to just kind of get that energy inside that child and then do that eye locking technique with the babies, you know, because we have to listen to them.
How did Detroit become such a big hub in the psychedelic scene?
Mama Ayana Iyi: In 2014 my husband decided to bring the psychedelic conference energy to Detroit. I don’t know if he was the first one to do a psychedelic country conference in the United States, but I know in 2014, everything was hush hush and underground and you had to go over the water over to Europe to get more information. And nobody could really afford to do that. To go to these conferences in Europe, to pay the amount, the plane fare.
When they scheduled him, they would put him maybe on the, 13th floor at eight o’clock in the morning on a Sunday after everybody hung out on a Saturday. And so nobody would be there, maybe three or four people.
So the word got out. Did you hear the man on the 13th floor in the corner?
He was talking some really deep stuff, but he knew that he was being censored. He knew there was a lack of diversity there. And so he said, you know what, I’m gonna have the strength enough to bring it to Detroit. I can speak as long as I want to. I can say what the hell I want to say, and I’m going to open the doors up for everybody to come through.
Watch the full interview with Mama Ayana
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