What Eleven Days in Peru Taught Me About the Body’s Ancient Knowing
by MEgan Moseley
I almost didn’t notice it.
Tucked in a drawer in my room at the retreat center in Peru was a book: The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby. I had brought my own books and my journal — as usual, I had a plan. I set it on the dresser. But it kept drawing my attention, the way certain things do when they aren’t quite done with you. I finally picked it up. I didn’t put it down for the next ten days.
Narby, an anthropologist, spent years in the Amazon trying to understand how indigenous healers knew things — specific, verifiable things about plants, compounds, and healing — that Western science had only recently confirmed. His hypothesis: the information was coming from DNA — that spiral ladder at the foundation of all living things. Not just human DNA. All of it. The same molecular architecture running through a plant, a fungus, a jaguar, a human being. We are, at our most fundamental level, built from the same source code. And Narby’s radical suggestion is that ayahuasca creates the conditions to receive transmissions from that shared intelligence directly. That the visions induced by ayahuasca are, in some fundamental way, the body’s own molecular intelligence becoming visible. The spiral staircases, the snakes and ladders so universally reported in ceremony — they are, he suggests, the double helix. Life, recognizing itself.
I read this and felt something crack open. Not because it was new, exactly... but because I have always had the deep sense that we are interconnected by a wisdom and intelligence beyond our individual beingness. I have spent over three decades working with the body. And the more experience I gain, the more convinced I become that the body is our source of wisdom, intelligence, and holds the roadmap to our healing.
The tremor work I do, TRE® — Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises — goes far beyond simply releasing muscle tension. Clients drop into experiences similar to psychedelic states that feel ancient. Images arise, and hidden memories held for decades surface. The tremor is an innate reflex, all mammals have it. It brings us back to homeostasis. As the strongest parasympathetic activation we share, it not only settles the nervous system — it restores it.
Sitting in Peru with Narby’s words, I felt an even deeper understanding land... the tremor is tapping the same well of inner wisdom. Ceremony, plant medicine, and the tremor are all invitations home to ourselves. I found myself listening differently. Not just inward, but outward— to the land, to the plants, to what the jungle was doing at 3am when everything human goes quiet. There is an intelligence in living systems that we have largely forgotten how to hear. The plants the healers work with aren’t metaphors. They are elders. They carry information in forms our rational minds weren’t trained to receive — but our bodies resonate with.
That is the thing Peru gave me that I am still unwrapping: the confirmation that this inner knowing is not only mystical. It is biological. It is ancient. It is in all of us, at every moment, waiting and wanting to be heard.
I came home changed. More expansive. Lighter and brighter. More solid. More connected to myself. And with a profound gratitude and humility for a deeper sense of belonging to the world around me.
Simple Ways to Begin Listening to Your Body’s Intelligence
1. Spend five minutes each morning sitting quietly with your hands on your belly or chest. You don’t need to do anything. Simply notice: Is there warmth? Tension? A subtle hum or stillness? The body speaks constantly. This is practice in learning its language.
2. The next time you’re outdoors, slow your pace by half and let your senses lead. What do you smell before you see it? What sounds reach you at the edges of your awareness? The body is a receiver, not just a vehicle. Let it receive.
