Physician, best-selling author, and renowned speaker, Dr. Gabor Maté, speaks about his experience at the Temple of the Way of Light in June, 2019.

After working with ayahuasca over the last decade, this was Gabor’s first time drinking ayahuasca in the Amazon with the Shipibo. He came to the Temple to co-lead a retreat specifically held for western medical professionals and together, they took a deep dive into traditional Amazonian healing. They experienced the spiritual technologies, sacred science, and healing traditions of the Amazon first hand, and left the Temple with a newfound appreciation for the depth, sophistication, and mastery of Shipibo healers.

The main realization experienced by the vast majority of the group was that Western medicine has not yet recognized nor been able to address spiritual and energetic issues – the root cause of disease and disorder. They also realized that they often struggle unknowingly with the energies that they pick up from their patients, commonly referred to as vicarious trauma in the West.

The retreat offered the group a powerful experience in energy healing that transformed their perspectives and opened them up new ways of understanding the multidimensionality of human health. They left with the knowledge that for health and well-being to be fully experienced in most chronic cases, it is necessary to move beyond addressing symptomatic physical issues and into a causal approach to healing – resolving traumas, clearing heavy and trapped energies, aligning the mind, body, and soul, and reconnecting to the true self.

Another significant realization that was shared by Gabor and the group was seeing that ayahuasca sits within a complex healing system that has developed over hundreds, if not thousands of years. It is the system and the wisdom carried in the healing lineages, not ayahuasca alone, that ensures deep and lasting healing can occur. By ensuring experienced and safe administration, regulation, and direction of ayahuasca during the healing journey (fundamentally through the use of ikaros), ayahuasca is “activated” and offers the potential for profound healing and transformation.