The Side Effects of a Western Brain- Charlotte Nicholson)

The Side Effects of a Western Brain

“The Western mind is very strong. It tries to understand too much.”

TWIGHLIGHT IN THE maloca

When I arrive early at the maloca before an ayahuasca ceremony begins, there’s a moment I always look forward to. The sun lowers through the trees, frogs begin their nightly chorus, and the diesel lanterns glow just enough to light the circle.

I take a few minutes to move the lanterns until the light feels balanced, then sit quietly and wait for the guests  the pasajeros to gather on their mattresses around the edge of the space.

Each one arrives differently. Some curious. Some hesitant. Some carrying a weight that shows on their faces long before they speak.

That evening, one man shared quietly, “I feel so much shame and despair. I feel broken, lost, like a failure.”

A young woman said, “It feels like there’s a wall between me and the world.”

And another, a father from the US, “I don’t deserve to be here. I’ve been thinking about ending my life.”

These are not unusual statements.

Among guests from Western, industrialised societies, they are heartbreakingly common. Anxiety, depression, self-criticism, and emotional exhaustion  they seem to travel with the culture we come from.

Yet, among the Shipibo healers I work alongside in Peru, these struggles are rare. One of them once smiled gently and said,

“The Western mind is very strong. It tries to understand too much.”

Another acknowledged the same strength  the capacity to imagine, invent, and analyse  as both a gift and a burden. A mind that can create incredible technology, but cannot easily switch itself off.

It made me think.

Many of us have been raised to live from the mind  to fix, control, explain  rather than with it.
We fill every pause with information. Every silence with stimulation.
And slowly, our minds become overactive while our bodies fall out of rhythm.

The Shipibo healers speak of this as mental noise that they clear in ceremony through song the icaros vibrations that bring the body, mind, and energy system back into harmony.
In Western language, we might call this regulation. A rebalancing of the psycho-neuro-endocrine-immune system: how psyche and physiology meet.

It invites a question that feels increasingly relevant in our culture… What if healing isn’t about adding more knowledge or doing more work, but about remembering how to be still?

To let the mind rest.
To feel the breath again.
To listen for what’s here, beneath the noise.

Perhaps that is the medicine we most need, not something new to learn, but something ancient to remember.

Further reading: RESEARCH INTO THE EFFICACY OF TRAUMA SENSITIVE YOGA