9-Day Ayahuasca Retreat: Awakening our Wisdom and Compassion

Since incorporating meditation practice into our Deep Immersion retreats over many years, we have seen the significant benefits of combining meditation with deep medicine work. In the spirit of love and clarity, this very special retreat is designed to guide you back home to your true and authentic self, to living a life with a courageous heart. We will weave traditional ayahuasca healing ceremonies led by highly experienced Shipibo healers, with daily meditations facilitated by Juliana Bizare, together with a series of body-based energy and awareness practices.

In addition to ayahuasca ceremonies and meditation, the core components of the program, this retreat includes a series of practices in mindfulness, compassionate self-inquiry, daily yoga practices, group sharing, and private one-on-one sessions with the facilitators. We will guide you through your process, supporting you to sit with, surrender to, and ultimately to let go of the painful emotions and incoherent thoughts that arise.

Guided by the spirit of ayahuasca and through an immersion into the mystery of the Now, we intend for you to re-embrace the sacredness of nature and the deep interconnection between each other and all beings.

Everything that surfaces, that gets released or revealed during ceremony, will be integrated with practices such as yoga, mindfulness, and meditation, self-compassion, and group sharing. Meditation will be the perfect holder of the truth, allowing us to have more clarity on what is really going on in each moment. We will create an environment that provides the opportunity to experience profound insights into the real meaning of connection.

We are committed to providing the safest and deepest ayahuasca healing and plant spirit shamanism experience in the Amazon and to ensuring that you are able to sustain, cultivate, and integrate your healing experiences in your day-to-day life after your retreat. We constantly strive to create the optimal conditions to work with ayahuasca in our retreats, and since 2007, have been passionately dedicated to providing a caring, professional, and supportive setting – always ensuring a safe, sacred space for our guests to heal, integrate, and transform.

“When fear touches someone’s pain it turns into pity. When love touches someone’s pain it turns into compassion.” – Stephen Levine

We have all experienced some form of suffering, whether it be driven by hatred, greed, confusion, or delusion about who we really are. A large part of the work we do at the Temple is about releasing past trauma and letting go of the things that don’t serve us anymore. But this path of transformation is also about cultivation.

In this retreat, we will create the conditions and plant the seeds to support the awakening and development of our wisdom and compassion. Wisdom and compassion are like the two wings of a bird that work in balance. In a very safe and natural environment, we will support you into practices to cultivate a more steady mind and an open heart. We will explore ways to free our wisdom by learning how to be present, here and now, with awareness. Our practice will be to cultivate present awareness rather than to seek only to accumulate more knowledge. We will be looking into the nature of awareness – the qualities and attitudes that are present when we are simply aware.

Cultivating compassion is like finding another way to be in the world.

Compassion bridges our spiritual practice with the everyday challenges that we have to face all the time. It is like a meditation in action that invites us to bring the work into our relationships. And as our insights deepen, we will learn how to care for our whole selves with a wiser and kinder heart.

We will guide you through the process, supporting you to sit with, surrender to, and ultimately let go of the painful emotions and incoherent thoughts that can arise. We will create an environment that provides the opportunity to experience profound insights into the real meaning of connection. Guided by the spirit of ayahuasca, the power of meditation, and through an immersion into the mystery of the Now, we intend for you to re-embrace the sacredness of nature and the deep interconnection between each other and all beings.

In the Shipibo tradition, the healing process is focused on cleansing the energy field that surrounds us (niwe, in Shipibo), which picks up toxic energies from our environment and traumatic issues of our past. The healers’ encyclopedic knowledge of medicinal plants of the Amazon Rainforest allows them to heal a wide range of psycho-spiritual, emotional, and sometimes physical conditions. They do this through ancient healing practices such as ikaros (songs of the plants), intense perfumes, individually prescribed plant remedies, and powerful energetic work.

The healing you will receive from the healers and ayahuasca will cleanse a tremendous amount of dense energies that have accumulated in your system as well as bring up many fragmented aspects of your past that have been buried into your subconscious, both during the ceremonies, and often for days, weeks, and months after a retreat. The more self-reflection, courage, responsibility, and awareness you bring to the process post-retreat, the more benefits you will gain as ayahuasca and the plant-spirits continue to work with you in your life.

Ayahuasca helps to dissolve the illusory self and significantly increase your awareness of your own self-constructed boundaries, and guides you to release fear-filled and self-limiting beliefs.

Ayahuasca initiates a long term healing journey that supports your overall liberation from the hypnosis of your conditions; shining a light into your shadow, and helping you to become aware of negative patterns. You then need, over the longer term, to become intimate with your fears, embrace your shadow, and consciously parent yourself back to wholeness.

This is the slow path towards freedom from fear, resulting in increasingly feeling lighter, brighter, more vital, more compassionate, and more in touch with yourself and the world around you. Ayahuasca will be there supporting you throughout your process for many months and even years after your retreat. Through private one-on-one sessions, sharing circles, and guided classes, we will support you significantly with your overall integration process, which is as important as the treatment you receive during the retreat.

Juliana Bizare

Juliana was born in Brazil, and spent most of the last 18 years of her life living in different countries. Traveling has always been a fun possibility of learning more about herself, and has extended her sense of connection with others.

Juliana started practicing yoga and meditation about 17 years ago. She took a 2-year Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation training in California with Katchie Ananda, and extended this study to Spirit Rock, where she did regular retreats and workshops. She spent almost two years in India and Nepal, and started teaching Yoga at Tushita Meditation Centre in Dharamansala, India in 2010. She has also studied with renowned Yoga and Buddhist masters like The Chanchani, Usha Devi, Tenzin Palmo, and others.

Juliana began her relationship with ayahuasca in the Santo Daime tradition over 20 years ago. To Juliana, ayahuasca is a powerful female teacher, who can show us the real potential of an expanded awareness. Currently what is present in her heart is a deep yearning to really understand what it is to be human. Whenever she finds herself in the role of a teacher, she tries to bring an element of humanity, teaching from a place where being vulnerable and real is ok.

Availability and Booking

Please choose your preferred retreat date below and fill in the necessary information on the following pages in order to make your booking.

All registrations must be made from a computer as we do not have mobile capability for our medical forms at this time.

Once you have completed your booking and your medical information has been reviewed by our team, we will be in touch with you to confirm your booking.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Please do not book flights or make any travel arrangements until your registration and medical information has been reviewed and you have been approved to attend a workshop.