From Traveling the World to the Journey Within

I am Ghazaleh (Gasale)

I grew up with many challenges from childhood. I was a rebellious, wild, and sensitive child; a girl who deeply felt unseen. I always had the feeling that my parents wanted a son, and unconsciously I was trying to be both the daughter of the family and also fill the empty space of the son who was not there for them. This made me involved very early with roles, expectations, and deep family wounds.

In my teenage years, I lost my grandmother; an experience that cast a heavy shadow over me, and I spent my youth with severe depression, suicidal thoughts, deep family conflicts, and distance from my parents. My wounds were still not healed, and sometimes I tried different medications to feel better, but I never felt good with medication. I felt that instead of healing me, it was numbing and suppressing a part of my being. I had many disagreements, challenges, and distances with my mother, who at that time was religiously extreme, and I was deprived of her affection.

At the age of twenty-nine, I met my former husband, and after that I immigrated to Germany; a place where I felt I had to build everything from zero: a new language, new friends, a new society, and a new life. But I had not yet healed. The wounds of childhood, loneliness, homesickness, family relationships, and repeating patterns were still with me. My marriage relationship also did not ultimately become a safe and healing place for me, and after a few years, I left it.

After the separation, I entered a very deep loneliness; a loneliness that today I am grateful for, because it was in that dark space that my hero’s journey began. During that period, I met a woman who meditated and had a strange peace within her. She became a sign for me that I needed to become familiar with this world.

I traveled to India and lived for ten days at Tushita Meditation Center. There, I learned meditation, and for the first time, I understood more deeply how the mind works and how it produces suffering. After returning, for long periods of time, I isolated myself in a cabin in nature in Germany and worked on my traumas, pains, wounds, and repeating patterns. I learned to use loneliness, instead of escaping from it, as a sacred space for seeing myself.

Alongside Buddhism and meditation, psychedelic experiences also sometimes opened doors into my unconscious. They helped me see myself, my suffering, my fears, and my relationship with life more deeply. My life slowly took on a new shape: the cabin, silence, nature, meditation, solitude, work with the unconscious, and deep inner experiences.

After experiencing mushrooms and LSD, I decided to experience Ayahuasca. In 2023, I traveled to Colombia and participated in Ayahuasca ceremonies; an experience that was very powerful and deep for me. This plant taught me in different areas: connection with myself, connection with others, connection with the invisible world, and a deeper understanding of the path of life.

At the end of that same journey, in the Amazon rainforest, I was bitten by a snake and was hospitalized for eleven days. On the first night, I truly thought I might die. There, I asked myself: If I die right now, am I satisfied with my life? And my answer was that I had lived a beautiful life, but if I survived, I wanted to dedicate my life to freedom, healing, and helping others. That experience of death-awareness made my path much deeper and clearer.

Later, I went to Africa, to the country of Gabon, and with the Indigenous Bwiti tradition and the plant Iboga, I had the deepest psychedelic experience of my life. That path was very difficult, ascetic, and shaking. During the process, I had deep crying, and even part of my hair turned white. But after the end of that experience, I understood that all those difficulties were not without reason; it was as if my suffering, traumas, and wounds had to come to the surface so that Iboga would know what it was working with. After that journey, I felt more transformed, more powerful, and more ready to serve others.

After I myself began to feel better with the methods I had learned on this path, and especially after the experiences I had with psilocybin mushrooms, which slowly took me toward the world of meaning, the unconscious, and a deeper connection with life, I felt it was time to begin this path with the closest people in my life: my family.

First, I started with my father and mother. My mother was open and had a deep experience with psilocybin and the psychedelic world. After that experience, I saw a big change in her. Her view was no longer as closed and one-sided as before. It was as if she was able, for a moment, to touch unity, connection, and a deeper meaning of life. She took one step toward me, and I, who for years had been running away from spirituality, took one step toward her. Today, my relationship with my mother is very loving and close.

After that, I experienced this path with my sister as well. She was in a very dark and heavy period and had suicidal thoughts. This amazing plant helped her move away from that darkness, see herself again, and come out of a toxic relationship.

After the experience with my family, I slowly went toward my close friends, and I saw very deep and amazing results. People who had carried pain, fear, suppressed tears, or repeating patterns with them for years were able, in this space, to see things, release them, and access new parts of themselves.

From there, I slowly began my work with people. I formed an online community, we held group sessions, and we spoke about trauma, fear, relationships, the body, family, spirituality, and the unconscious. In this space, many people reached deep releases; they cried, had catharsis, moved through their fears, felt seen, and found new friends.

In Iran, Germany, Canada, and along my journeys, I also used with others the methods I had learned throughout the years: meditation, breathing practices, bodywork, trauma work, psychedelics, rapé, accompanying people in inner journeys, and holding space for deep experiences. In Iran, I held different ceremonies, in Germany I had two group ceremonies, and I accompanied more than ten one-on-one trip-sitting experiences. My last group experience until today was in May 2026 in Toronto, Canada.

In the winter of 2026, I had one month of deep ascetic practice and dieta in the Amazon rainforest with the sacred plant Ayahuasca; a very challenging, difficult, and deep experience, which happened at the same time as a tense period for Iranians. That dieta was one of the hardest and deepest experiences of my life and brought me into new layers of working with despair, grief, healing, and surrender.

After that, my path continued: Peru, experience with the sacred cactus Wachuma, Ecuador, working with shamans and people who work with energy, the body, and the power of belief. Today, I live and work in Costa Rica; in a retreat center that is still taking shape, where healing ceremonies with sacred plants and Indigenous traditions are sometimes held.

My current method of accompanying people is mostly based on working with psilocybin mushrooms; but for me, the substance itself is only one part of the path. What matters a lot is preparation before the ceremony, assessing the person’s readiness for transformation, creating a safe space, meditation, grounding, breathing practices, support during the journey, and after that, integration.

I believe that a psychedelic experience without preparation and integration can remain incomplete. That is why before the journey, I speak with the person, explore their intentions, fears, and readiness, and after the experience, in a support session, I help them let what they have seen, felt, or released find its place in their real life. Letting go of old habits is one of the important stages of integration.

My path has been shaped through suffering, loneliness, death-awareness, travel, meditation, sacred plants, and deep work with the unconscious. I do not see myself as a healer who has come from the outside to save someone. I am only a human being who has passed through her own dark path, broken many times, rebuilt herself many times, and today wants to hold a safe, honest, and deep space for human beings who are ready to face themselves.

For me, healing means freedom; it means that a human being can come out of old roles, family wounds, inner fears, and repeating patterns, and return again to their life, body, heart, and soul.

I am not a teacher. I believe that everyone has an inner guide within themselves, and I try to show this to the person. My path began from deep personal experiences with meditation, Vipassana, magic mushrooms, Ayahuasca, and sacred plants, and slowly turned into a wider journey among cultures, countries, and different rituals. On this path, I traveled to different places around the world; from Colombia and the Amazon to India, Costa Rica, Gabon, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Italy, Spain, Greece, Iceland, the Netherlands, Austria, Canada, and lands that each changed a part of my view toward life, the body, the mind, nature, and spirituality.

On my YouTube channel, Bahamim, I speak about my real experiences; from Ayahuasca in Colombia, life and ascetic practice in the Amazon rainforest, getting to know Indigenous tribes, meditation, Buddhism, breath, fear, love, suffering, relationship with family, inner healing, and facing the dark and light parts of my being. For me, spirituality means returning to becoming a child.