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In my years as Rythmia's Chief Medical Officer, I've watched thousands of guests arrive feeling broken, and beyond help. On day one they are nervous, shy, and uncertain, but by the end of seven days, so many of them leave lighter, with a renewed lease on life. Often with a miracle. Most of those stories stay between the guest, their facilitators, and our post-ceremony integration workshops. So when Jack Canfield told us he wanted to collect them in a book, we were thrilled.
Jack sits on our Board of Directors and is famously known as the co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul, the best-selling book series that has sold more than 600 million copies and earned him two Guinness World Records, all built on the idea that one stranger's true story can change your life.
His new book, Ayahuasca for the Soul, brings that same idea to plant medicine. It gathers 79 first-person accounts from people who sat in ceremony, many of them here at Rythmia, and four of those stories are Jack's own. Among them are familiar names like Cesar Millan, Iyanla Vanzant, AnnaLynne McCord, Shep Rose of Southern Charm, and comedian Chuck Nice, alongside combat veterans, CEOs, parents, people in recovery, and first-timers who had never tried anything like this before.
As someone who has been a part of Rythmia since its inception, what moves me most about this book is its honesty. These are real people describing what brought them here, what they faced in ceremony, and what changed after. That kind of candor helps anyone considering this work understand what it can and can't do, and why doing it safely matters so much.
What's Inside
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The book opens with a foreword by Michael Bernard Beckwith and has been endorsed by New York Times best-selling authors Anita Moorjani, Dave Asprey, and John Gray, to name a few, but the heart of it is the stories themselves.
Every story in Ayahuasca for the Soul follows the same arc that made Chicken Soup for the Soul so beloved. It starts with the hope, and sometimes the desperation, that brought someone to ceremony, moves through the experience itself, and ends with what shifted afterward. Some of the breakthroughs are unexpected and some are dramatic, and reading them side by side, you start to notice how often a reality star and a combat veteran are working on the same wound.
Many of the contributors are honest about the fear and the hard moments, and that honesty is important. But there's plenty of light in these pages too. Some stories will make you laugh out loud, some will make you cry, and more than a few will stay with you long after you close the book.
Read It for Yourself
Ayahuasca for the Soul is available now on Amazon. Whether you've already been to Rythmia and want to see your own experience reflected back, or you're still wondering if this work is right for you, I hope you'll pick it up.
If the book moves you, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. Reviews help more people find these stories, and even a sentence or two makes a huge difference.
To hear more about the book in Jack's own words, read his interview with SPIN here.
