This special program has been a dream of ours for several years and we are now excited to be able to offer this to guests who are planning to attend this particular ayahuasca healing retreat.
This will be an all-encompassing experience where you will learn how to navigate the integration process with more tools, more clarity, and more support, all intended to help you create a new paradigm of your life filled with ease, presence, joy, growth, and inner and outer connection.
After the March 31st to April 11th ‘Living in Alignment’ 12-day Ayahuasca Retreat, our Integration Extension Retreat offers you the opportunity to stay at the Temple for an additional 5 days, in a separate center from our main retreat center, yet still surrounded by the animals, plants, trees, rhythms and energies of the jungle.
The 5-day integration extension offers the ideal scenario to experience the acute phase of your integration process whilst still feeling nourished, nurtured and cradled by the energies and rhythms of the Amazon and the Temple team before you return home.
What is the most important aspect of any transformational healing experience, like working with ayahuasca?
For most people, we have found that the following points are really the essence of integration and transformation:
- The ability to embody what you have learned about yourself (whilst working with ayahuasca) and how to incorporate and fully commit to new ways of being after you go back into the world and return to your “normal” life.
- To consistently experience the simplicity and ease of an unburdened and unencumbered self and life, without being constantly plagued by judgement (of self and others), inner struggles, doubts, and fears.
- To feel supported, safe, seen, and to continue this work as part of a loving community (that will inevitably become a group of close friends for long after your time in the Amazon).
Comprehensive Integration Program
During the Integration Extension Retreat, you will:
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Experience daily yoga, breathwork and meditation classes – to support you with new tools and together create a simple set of daily practices that will inspire you to continue to embrace your integration process when you are back home. Integration can continue for up to a year after a retreat at the Temple!
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Learn from a Shipibo healer how to prepare your own medical plant bath and also receive other special treatments from the Shipibo Maestros – in essence, we can say that ayahuasca is about cleaning and clearing not just the physical body, but fundamentally all that exists on an energetic and mental level; blocked, heavy energies, negative thought patterns, limited self-beliefs, and traumas.However, these shadow elements, old energies and negative patterns often continue to be dislodged, released and come to the surface for 1 to 2 weeks post-retreat. Continuing the process of cleaning your energetic field with plant baths is one way to maintain the work done by the Shipibo healers. It is a very important practice in this tradition!
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Collaborate with the Permaculture team from the Chaikuni Institute – get your hands dirty, give back to the (spirit of the) land, and support us and leave a piece of your energy at the Temple through planting medicinal plants including ayahuasca. Working with your hands (when for many people, day-to-day life is often limited to working on a computer, in an office, surrounded by concrete and tarmac, immersed in a virtual, artificial and technological environment) can be a powerful way to still the mind and to generate positive energy that you then offer to gentle, spiritual action; reciprocating to the local environment, and cultivating the teachings, insights, and revelations in an embodied way.
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Experience Art and Movement as medicine – explore different ways to express yourself and feel more deeply into what is arising within as the shamanic healing begins to settle, leaning into and developing more profound levels of trust in the plants, in yourself, and in Source. Surrendering further to the process, patiently allowing whatever it is that is emerging, and having the space to truly listen deeply and hear what comes up can be challenging in the hustle and bustle of daily life.
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Engage with Offerings and Gratitude Rituals – giving back to the spirits of nature and the Earth herself. We can often default to focusing on what we are getting, what we think we need, what we think we want, as opposed to Being in a state of acceptance and flow. Yet the more we focus on getting and doing, the more we reinforce a sense of lack, or not having enough. We will use the practice of offering, orienting to ‘what I can give’ instead of ‘what I can get’ as a powerful way to understand and appreciate our interconnectedness with everything and everyone and learn how to dissolve our limited and separate sense of self.
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Experience Sharing Circles – focused on exploring ways to integrate your experience with ayahuasca and the powerful shamanic healing work of the Shipibo. We support you with how to get clear about ‘what’ you are integrating, what themes you are working with, and what may be in the way still. What is self-love and how can we cultivate it? How can we forgive ourselves and others, letting go of the stories and pain of the past? How do we create a consistent sense of presence?
We will explore these themes, share new tools and practices, and support you in pro-deepening ways you may already have to focus on your integration process. We are also aware of how much we can learn from other people’s experiences, and the sharing circles offer the opportunity for everyone to share and support each other as a small community.
- Individual Support from a Shipiba Maestra – you will have more time to spend one one-on-one with one of our women healers, who will be available each day of the integration extension to respond to questions and support you.
- Facilitated by Juliana Bizare – who leads the Temple’s Integration Program.
The Journey Back to Wholeness
The Temple’s ayahuasca healing retreats are the beginning of a much longer process of healing and self-exploration. Our retreats offer a significant intervention to address chronic emotional pain and psycho-spiritual issues that accumulate in modern life, and a profound catalyst that accelerates our overall journey back to wholeness.
Our ayahuasca healing retreats affect substantial and lasting change for most who attend our programs. Healing with ayahuasca works in cycles. For most, one workshop will bring their lives back into significant alignment to continue a path of healing, expansion, and self-discovery without further treatment being necessary. We also see some guests returning to continue their healing work with the plants and with ayahuasca after their first retreat.
We advise, in most cases, that it is important not to return for another program before having spent at least six months to one year after a retreat focused on integration, to allow time for the work with the medicine to continue to expand and unfold.
It is important to know that ayahuasca is not a panacea. We can never offer any guarantees regarding healing. The key to successful healing in most cases is the combination of a quality ayahuasca brew, highly skilled, and well-intentioned healers acting as conduits to a large team of plant spirits, experienced and caring facilitators, and a safe and compassionate environment.
Of equal importance is your own approach to healing – coming with clear intentions, a strong commitment to your process, and the courage to face your shadow will deepen your healing and transformation.
We create the conditions for nature to heal itself – us!
Focus on Integration
The healing you will receive will cleanse dense energies that have accumulated in your system as well as bring up many aspects of your past that have been buried in your subconscious. It is important to understand that this process not only takes place during the ceremonies but also normally for days, weeks, and months after a retreat.
The sophisticated healing practices of the Shipibo Onanya initiate a long-term healing journey that supports overall liberation from the hypnosis of conditioning – shining a light onto your shadow and helping you to become aware of your patterns, intimate with your fears, and consciously parent yourself back to wholeness.
Ayahuasca and the plant spirits will continue to work with you after you leave the Temple, and the more self-reflection, courage, responsibility, and awareness you bring to your process during this crucial phase, the more benefits you will gain.
Ayahuasca helps dissolve the illusory self and increases awareness of self-constructed boundaries, highlighting and helping release fear-filled and self-limiting beliefs. This is the slow path towards freedom from fear, resulting in increasingly feeling lighter, and more vital, compassionate, and in touch with yourself and the world around you.
Through regular group sharing and guidance throughout the workshop, we will support you with your overall integration process, which is as important as the treatment you receive during the retreat.
