How Ayahuasca helped me study medicine
I don't think I would have been able to study medicine if it wasn't for Ayahuasca. This is a very bold statement to make but it's absolutely true.
I was 31 when I started medical school. It was my third career, and by then I had already spent years trying to recover my health and learning to live differently.
For most of my life, I knew how to push.
I knew how to work hard, achieve, compete and put myself under enormous pressure.
What I didn't know was how to stop. How to rest. How to trust myself when things became difficult.
Through my work with Ayahuasca, something slowly began to change.
I started to realise how much of my pressure came from insecurity. From needing to prove myself. From worrying about what others thought of me. From feeling that perhaps I wasn't intelligent enough, capable enough, good enough, or even beautiful enough.
And as those layers started to unravel, I became more able to handle pressure precisely because I didn't need to prove myself in the same way anymore.
I could rest.
I could allow myself to make mistakes.
I could be under enormous pressure and still come back to myself.
And strangely, learning how to stop pushing is part of what made it possible for me to do something as demanding as medicine.
This wasn't one big revelation. It was a journey that unfolded over many years.
I also began to understand that some of my insecurities went much deeper than my own upbringing.
I had to explore what it meant to come from Peru, from a country so often labelled "underdeveloped", and the subtle feeling that can be carried through generations that somehow we are at a disadvantage — that others know better, are more advanced, more educated, somehow more than us.
There was an ancestral history there that I needed to unravel too.
And slowly, I began to understand my inherent worth — not only as a human being, but as the unique soul that I am, with my own gifts, beauty and potential.
There was less and less need to compete. To be better. To seek approval. To fight to prove anything.
Instead, what emerged was a heartfelt desire to share what I had learned.
When I eventually left the hospital, I made myself a promise:
I would never build anything in my life again out of pushing and pressure.
That was over.
Above everything, I would protect my health.
It had taken me too many years to recover it, to understand myself and to finally find some balance. I wasn't willing to sacrifice all of that again in order to achieve something.
I still work hard. I still have dreams. I still create and want to contribute.
But I am learning to do it from a different place.
And this is what I would like for you too.
To deeply realise — not just intellectually, but to actually feel it in your heart — that you are inherently worthy.
Regardless of what has happened in your life. Regardless of your upbringing, your struggles or what you have or haven't achieved.
I want you to be able to see your own beauty.
To see the beauty of your heart.
And from that place, begin to live your life differently and build something authentic for yourself.
If you feel ready for this journey, we regularly run retreat programmes in the Peruvian Amazon.
I would love to welcome you there.
With much love,
Dr Vanessa Leon-Sulca
This article describes my personal experience with Ayahuasca and my own healing journey. It is not intended to suggest that Ayahuasca treats or cures any medical condition.
Dr Vanessa Leon,
Gnosis Clinic Founder
Dr Vanessa León is a medical doctor trained at Barts and The London School of Medicine, of Peruvian Andean Quechua lineage. She holds a Master's in Humanistic Psychotherapy from the Galene Institute in Madrid and is a qualified Ayurvedic Practitioner. She has explored the shamanic medicine of her homeland, and trained in microdosing therapy.
She works with her patients on both the physical and emotional roots of illness, bringing modern medicine and traditional wisdom together in one integrative, heart-led approach.
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