Living In Alignment: Ayahuasca Healing Retreat

Living In Alignment: Ayahuasca Healing Retreat offers an immersion in traditional Shipibo plant-spirit healing complemented with yoga classes, powerful methods of inquiry, and unique practices specifically designed to support you as you integrate your healing work, empowering you to take full responsibility for and agency over your life. The alchemy of these systems offers an opportunity for powerful healing that reaches into the roots of trauma and provides highly effective integration guidance to bring profound and lasting transformation.

We work with two female, two male Shipibo healers (Onanyabo) and one female Shipibo herbalist (Vegetalista) who provide the deepest levels of healing by combining a series of six ayahuasca ceremonies together with traditional Shipibo healing practices, including energetic healing massages, individualized plant remedies, plant medicine baths, and plant vapor baths.

The powerful work of the Onanyabo is supported by two highly trained facilitators who provide translation from Spanish to English, and hold individual and group processing sessions throughout the retreat, as well as an experienced yoga teacher offering Yin Yoga sessions before each ceremony.

Moving beyond an anthropocentric approach to healing, focused on individual and materialistic realms, whether physical or psychological, the Shipibo approach to healing is eco-centric, fundamentally carrying the intention to restore our conscious connection and energetic alignment with the natural world.

As much as our soils, forests, and oceans need diversity to thrive, natural healing systems that work within and honor the diversity of nature are able to provide full-spectrum healing. Coming to an ayahuasca retreat in the Amazon, the birthplace and source of the medicine, being supported by the energies, elements, forces, and spirits of the jungle, and guided by the indigenous wisdom keepers of these powerful ethnomedical traditions, is the most effective and deepest way to work with ayahuasca. We create the conditions for nature to heal itself – us!

In the Heart of the Amazon Rainforest, the Source of Ayahuasca

Covering a total of 222 hectares, The Temple is located in an extraordinarily beautiful setting that has been cared for for over 13 years, with thousands of medicinal plants and trees and ayahuasca vines growing throughout the grounds, native flowers and ornamentals, permaculture projects, demonstration agroforestry plots, food production, environmentally friendly bio-digester waste systems, and rainwater harvest water systems.

Guest accommodation is in private, individual en-suite bungalows (tambos) spread over three hectares of our grounds near the maloka (ceremony house), each with a sink and flushing toilet, high-quality bed mattress, bed linens and towels, a hammock, a comfortable rattan chair, and mosquito netting. Our food is lovingly prepared by a team of three cooks, using as much of our own fruits and vegetables and local produce as possible.

Through our commitment to create the optimal conditions and orientation to work with ayahuasca and passionate dedication to providing a genuinely caring, highly professional, and exceptionally supportive setting, the Temple has become known as the gold-standard ayahuasca healing center in the Amazon.

Providing a safe, sacred space for our guests to heal and transform is our priority. Awakening is our mission.

Honoring the Shipibo Healing Traditions

We deeply respect the indigenous healing traditions of the Shipibo People which have evolved over hundreds, possibly thousands of years. Their far-reaching ancestral lineages carry an expansive cosmology, an encyclopedic knowledge of medicinal plants (rao, in Shipibo) and a rich, ethnomedical legacy that includes and deeply understands the non-physical dimensions of being and the energetic architecture of the mind, body, and soul.

Working beyond a Newtonian understanding of reality, it could be said that their healing work is sourced from the quantum realms – a regenerative, energetically focused, soul-based, and highly sophisticated, spirit-assisted healthcare system.

We work with some of the most respected, kind-hearted, and powerful healers from the Shipibo tribe who are highly skilled in ayahuasca healing and plant-spirit curanderismo (shamanism) of the Amazon, and who have been carefully selected over many years to work at the Temple.

The Onanyabo are able to heal a huge range of psycho-spiritual, emotional, and physical conditions. Their healing process is focused on cleansing and purifying the energetic field that surrounds us. They identify the source of turmoil, disorder, and disease as stemming from heavy energies (mahua niwe) that are trapped due to personal and ancestral traumas (rate) or toxic energies picked up in our environments.

We provide potent and visionary ayahuasca sourced from deep in the rainforest of the Shipibo territories made from cielo (sky/heaven) ayahuasca and chacruna, with no admixtures. The ceremonies led by our healers combined with our exemplary track record of safety, protection, care for, and support of our guests offers the highest level of healing and mastery available in the Peruvian Amazon.

Review from Dr. Gabor Maté

Gabor came to the Temple in 2019 to experience the healing work of the Shipibo Onanyabo. In this video, he candidly shares his personal healing experience and impressions of the Temple.

Scientifically Validated Healing Outcomes

Between 2015 and 2019, a prospective, observational, non-controlled study took place at the Temple, conducted by ICEERS and the Beckley Foundation. The study is unprecedented and the results demonstrate that ayahuasca healing at the Temple provides highly significant improvements in long term well-being and quality of life, as well as in anxiety, depression, grief, and PTSD.

One of the most significant aspects of this landmark study is that it shows that Shipibo ayahuasca healing provides long-lasting healing benefits, with sustained improvements in health and well-being still measured one year after a retreat at the Temple.

As they continue to publish the results of the research in scientific journals, the study proves to represent a giant step forward towards the recognition of Shipibo traditional healing practices as a therapeutic treatment in the greater field of health and healing. Learn more about the research and findings here.

An ayahuasca retreat at the Temple is an intense process that offers a powerful opportunity to experience profound healing. Due to decades of training, and wisdom that is passed through many generations, the work of our Shipibo healers allows ayahuasca deeper access into the system, reaching into the roots of trauma and clearing energetic blockages that disconnect you from your true self. Through clearing the past and bringing energetic alignment to your body, mind, and soul, this transformational process initiates, or further deepens, a long-term journey of self-reflection, self-discovery, and spiritual awakening.

The healing traditions of the Shipibo work with ayahuasca as a nexus to a vast number of other plant medicines that operate together in synergy and symbiosis, to provide a “harmony of healing.” In order to play a symphony, an orchestra is required; it is not possible for one instrument alone to create a symphony.

In order to become an Onanya, an apprentice must carry out long and arduous training, a process called sama (master plant dietas). Sama is the process of establishing a connection with the spirit of the plant that is being dieted. Over many years, the plant spirits teach the apprentice how to navigate the inner worlds, how to heal, and how to become a conduit for the energetic medicines of the plants to be channelled to the patient. The most powerful energetic healing transmission is in the form of sound – the ikaro – the healing songs of the plants. Becoming a high-level healer typically takes at least ten years, although the learning process never stops.

Dietas enable the Onanyabo to open up portals while in expanded states with ayahuasca and to call in plant-spirit doctors to carry out energetic operations on a patient. It is the plant-spirit allies/doctors who disconnect, extract, clear, cleanse, and purify heavy energies from the system of the patient. The healer then works with the plant spirits to realign the patient’s energetic architecture (body, mind, and soul), reconnecting them to their essence and the natural order/world, and administers specific ikaros to protect the healing work and illuminate the patient’s path forwards.

The Shipibo’s perspectives on optimal health are radically different; they employ a process is far beyond our understanding of modern healthcare and sits outside of the widespread materialistic understanding of reality. The key to the success of the healing they provide lies in their experience of working in the inner, non-physical, non-local realms of being, a causal approach that challenges the underlying assumptions of the modern biomedical paradigm. As well as focusing on physical and psychological symptoms, they address the non-physical, energetic sources of disorder and disease, moving beyond the assertions of contemporary science and reaching into the realms of the quantum.

“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel… humble”  – Albert Einstein

Our experienced facilitators carry out an important role as bridges and translators between our healers and guests. They also hold space, listen, guide, and inspire guests throughout the program. We help our guests understand how to work with ayahuasca and all that this entails; how to process difficult emotions, handle projections, surrender, manage expectations, face challenges, overcome fears, embody teachings from the plants, incorporate visionary experiences, and make the journey from the head to the heart.

Our facilitators have many years of personal experience with ayahuasca and “walk their talk.” Through having faced and integrated much of their own pain and challenges and transitioned from self to service, they are able to share from a place of personal experience and guide others through the same process. We are deeply committed to our guests’ healing journeys and are passionate about our work.

During the retreat, you will receive a substantial amount of integration support to help you process your healing experience after each ceremony. We also offer guidance on how to sustain and cultivate any breakthroughs and insights you receive during your retreat, and how to ground transformative healing experiences into your day-to-day life. We ensure that every person who comes to the Temple receives individual attention and is held in a compassionate and caring environment throughout their healing process.

The Temple’s ayahuasca 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 retreats effect 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.

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. 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. Ayahuasca initiates 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.

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.

This is only an example of what the schedule might look like for this retreat

IMPORTANT APPLICATION INFO:

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

The Temple is open to anyone who is seriously committed to healing their body, mind, and soul, and who has the courage and willingness to fully partake in this process. However, please note that ayahuasca is not suitable for everybody. There are some instances where we are unable to accept an application due to potential psychological, medical, or pharmacological contraindications. All applicants will complete a comprehensive medical intake process to screen for any potential complications upon registration.

Please choose your preferred date below and continue through our intake process to complete your application. Once you have submitted your application, we will let you know if you are approved to attend the retreat within about one week or less. Once you are approved, your payment will be automatically charged to your credit card to confirm your space in the program.

Regarding our waiting lists: When a space becomes available in a full program, all members of the waiting list are notified simultaneously and the space will be filled by the first applicant. It is difficult for us to say whether a space will open or not – we do occasionally receive cancellations, but the timing is is unpredictable. If you join a waiting list, just keep an eye on your email for any notifications from us and be prepared to act quickly in order to secure an open space.

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

NOTE: Please do not book flights or make any travel arrangements until your application and medical information have been reviewed and you have been approved to attend the retreat.