What Is Iboga
The Godfather of all Plant Medicines
Iboga is a powerful healing plant medicine from equatorial west Africa. It was discovered a long time ago by the Pygmies (traditionally called Babongo) in what is today South Gabon.
Known as one of the oldest African tribes, they continue to live in their traditional ways and can be found deep in the African jungles. The Babongo tribe used Iboga for thousands of years for ritual and medicinal purposes.
Iboga is a small shrub that grows wild throughout Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Cameroon. Tabernanthe Iboga usually grows to seven feet, and under optimal conditions it can grow into a small tree of up to 30 feet tall. This tree with bright green leaves produce clusters of tiny white and yellow flowers and orange-colored, oval Iboga fruit.
Iboga’s root bark is harvested and ingested to receive healing and spiritual guidance. This guidance lead the Bwiti people in the study of life, which plants to use for what ailment, how to create their instruments and play them, and how to conduct their ceremonies.
What can it do for me?
Also called "Root of Truth", Iboga is deeply grounding and uses the truth to heal. Its goal is to bring you back to your original true self and reconnect you to your soul. It can help you understand how you got lost in the first place, and give you the tools to find your way home to yourself.
It helps release patterns, blocks, and traumas to free you from them – so you can be the true you. After the ceremony Iboga continues to help you by improving mindfulness and promoting neuroplasticity so you can create a new, healthier life with ease.
Iboga is a highly intelligent spirit that gives each person their own perfect healing experience to fit their specific needs – in the way they will best understand.
How does it work?
Iboga has the wisdom to seek out the root of our traumas. A master teacher, Iboga will give us insights on what life would be like if we continued down a path lacking awareness of our true self. It reveals how we are sabotaging and hurting ourselves, helps clean us up, and shows us how life can be when we cleanse old patterns, false beliefs, and begin to treat our lives with value, respect and love.
This medicine allows for a reconnection to our soul and aligns us to our purest state, before we were wounded. The wisdom of the plant will heighten our awareness to help us gain clarity about our passions, inspirations, creativity and purpose. By connecting us to our soul we receive the opportunity to realize the greatness of the gift of life that was given to us.
Iboga has psychoactive properties, and it gently stimulates the nervous system by cleaning and polishing your neurotransmitters which brings them back to their original default setting – ensuring they are firing and transmitting properly. Iboga opens us to our greater potential and greatly expands the mind. It illuminates the ways we can heal and transform our lives to create happiness and peace of mind.
Physical and Spiritual Detox
The first thing Iboga does is cleanse your body and your mind. It detoxes you of chemicals, toxins, viruses, parasites… anything that doesn’t belong in your body. Then it cleanses your mind of lies and bullshit; belief systems and negative thought patterns that do not serve you.
Iboga teaches us how to regain control of your mind, where your thoughts and emotions come from, and use the mind to your advantage by giving your a clear understanding of your power as a creator, and how to use it.
Iboga will show you not to live in the past (depression), or in the future (anxiety). Iboga helps teach us how to live in the present. This medicine has the power to begin to transform the way you think and how you approach your life.
Self-Empowerment
While this is a powerful medicine on many levels, it does NOT do the work for you. It will give you the very best tools to free yourself, and you must be the one to learn how to use them. This allows you to have the power to handle anything that life may throw at you in the future.
The Iboga retreat is just the beginning of the journey. This is about you having a different behaviors and thought patterns to create something different of your life. The medicine will guide the way but you must decide to walk the path every day to create a new future for yourself.
Iboga gives profound insights, clarity to one's life and to the truth of oneself. It will keep working with you for months after your retreat, and you will have the tools and knowledge it gave you for the rest of your life.
Used in a Shamanic traditional Bwiti psycho-spiritual ceremony setting, this is a powerful sacred plant teacher that has the ability to heal the mind, body and soul.
That has been my personal experience with the Iboga plant medicine and that’s why I choose to do this work. It can give you healing and freedom beyond what you thought possible.
-David O'Brien