Lovey-

My sense is that La Maria's medicine is perfectly suited for vision quests, healing work, communication with the Ancestors, soul retrieval and much more.

I echo Ryan's advice about quidding. Quidding fresh leaf is not only the traditional indigenous way of meeting this medicine, but it also opens a road that is, at once, gentler and deeper, a road that is, I feel, more conducive to healing work. If you don't have access to fresh leaf, dried leaves can be rehydrated in alcohol just before the journey.

Smoking the leaf, particularly enhanced leaf (extracts), can be tricky, especially when you talk about healing work. The journey tends to move quicker, and be a bit harder to navigate. It can also be more challenging to bring medicine back from journeys taken across the Bridge of Smoke.

There is, I feel, a great deal of wisdom to be found in the indigenous approach to this Green Elder, as reflected in the ways of the Mazatec Elders. In other words, I can fully understand why they quid, rather than smoke, the leaves. If you only have access to extracts, you could try cheek smoking, rather than inhaling. This can bring one to an experience that's more like quidding than smoking.

As for maintaining one's intentions for the journey...

I begin every dance with ceremony, staring with prayers of gratitude and thanks to the spirit of the plant, to my Ancestors and all helping spirits. I follow this with offerings, including Cacao Beans. As I give my offerings, I share my purpose for journeying, and speak from my heart. I may sing - but always quietly - or simply sit in silence, reflecting on the dance ahead. At the end of the journey, no matter how it goes, I close with more offerings of thanks and prayers of great gratitude.

During the journey itself, when I meet medicine I'd like to consciously bring back with me, I try, as best as possible, to repeat to myself what it is I'd like to bring back. If one goes deep enough, this may be difficult, if not impossible, to do at the time, but as the medicine begins to soften and you make your return to this world, it gets easier. I keep it simple, and keep repeating what I hope to bring back like a mantra - under water, shimmering bird, triangle symbol, violet flower. And once I return more fully, I write everything down, in as much detail as possible. For me, this is helpful.

I feel that La Maria has a particularly strong relationship with intention. It's important to her. So if we enter the dance with a clear intention, the dance itself will usually be clearer all around. Intention has a certain magnetic presence to it, and this grows in intensity the clearer our intention becomes. This magnetic presence then draws us more fully, and more effectively, through La Maria's world. The stronger it is, the more clearly and more fully we're lead through the dance.

Respect, reverence and clarity of intention are, for me, the foundations of the dance. I have a great deal of respect and gratitude for this beautiful Green Elder.

Love,
Veg

It is much more like mushrooms than DMT... when taken this way... you would love i bet...

Re: ' would never ever want to be there that long. '

ke,ke,ke... I guess that's why it's so sacred & revered. Ja, I gotta experience eating her ( I've tried the x5 extract a coupla times).. I've made a paste/liquidised recently - just have to be clear & be in the right space 1st before I 'step up'. Will post a report as soon as I try.

1Love

A tea would be ineffective.

Alcohol based tinctures can be created with the fortified leaf material you posses. These would be difficult to judge dosage with however, and such tinctures tend to burn the mouth. That said, many prefer these to quiding.

Tinctures are held in the mouth, not drank. Eating or drinking salvia produces little effect.

darn... most not have been any Salvia Divinorum in that Saliva....