Integration Intensive 9-Day Ayahuasca Retreat
Our mission at the Temple of the Way of Light is to serve people’s awakening. Our intention is to provide the conditions and environment for our guests to experience ancient healing traditions of the Amazon that offer the potential to catalyze an awakening from unconscious and misaligned ways of living in the modern world.
Our Integration Intensive Ayahuasca Retreats combine the mastery of our Shipibo healers with in-depth group processing and pioneering ontological inquiry, that serves to bridge the teachings of ayahuasca with a psycho-spiritual understanding of the Western mind. Both aspects of this transformational work focus on three core aspects; clearing & cleaning, aligning energies, and opening to your path of service & soul’s mission in the world.
The work of the healers is profound. In ceremony, they work with healing technologies that have been passed down through generations, and they have studied for decades to be able to offer the level and depth of healing that they provide. In ceremony, they work primarily with icaros (healing songs of the plants), soplar (healing breath), perfumes, and tobacco. Outside of ceremony, they offer regular plant baths, plant remedies, and other healing modalities from the Shipibo tradition.
Coming to an ayahuasca retreat in the Amazon, the birthplace and source of the medicine, being blessed by the energies and plant spirits of the jungle, and guided by the indigenous wisdom keepers of the rainforest, is the most effective and most powerful way to work with ayahuasca.
Yet it can also be challenging after having returned home to stay connected to the breakthroughs, insights and revelations received whilst working with ayahuasca in the Amazon. On this workshop we teach unique integration techniques that support you to re-design the architecture of your life and provide a pathway to create a life filled with inspiration, connection, and higher purpose after leaving the Temple.
After over a decade of facilitating ayahuasca healing, we have discovered complementary modalities that serve to deepen the medicine experience, help to center one’s mind and move away from the story and pain of our past, awaken to inspired new perspectives and possibilities, and, most importantly, help bring what we learn back into our lives. While ceremonies themselves are profoundly healing, for most people, awakening is not a lasting experience, but something we need to work at to stay connected to. Integration, or the process of bringing our experiences with the medicine into our lives, is an equally important piece of the work.
Our integration intensive workshops have a particular focus on deep-processing of shadow materials that arise during ayahuasca healing, releasing emotional blockages, resolving past traumas, and identifying and dismantling false core beliefs that negatively drive your view of yourself and the world around you.
The group work offered in these retreats will equip you with tools and a framework for inquiry into the self, increasing your understanding of your ceremony experiences and setting the stage for powerful integration once you go back into your life.
This retreat, like other 9-day retreats at the Temple, will have a team of three female Shipibo Maestras and two male Shipibo Maestros working to support your healing process over 5 night-time ayahuasca ceremonies and day-time healing practices. Day-time group conversations will be led by our Integration Director, Dr. Tanya, and will include working styles that draw from Dr. Gabor Maté’s Compassionate Inquiry and ontological inquiry drawn from her other teachers. The group work will be conversation-based and will require your participation. The retreats will also be co-led by several of our incredible staff of residential facilitators. You can expect to be challenged and well-supported throughout the retreat.
Dr. Tanya, ND
Tanya is our Vancouver, Canada-based Integration Director. She has many years of experience with plant medicines in the Shipibo tradition, and combines a background in the biological sciences and medical training with a deep reverence for the world of plant spirits.
In bringing together traditional shamanic and Western worldviews, she helps people make sense of their own growth journeys in a way that is accessible, to-the-point, and playful. Her additional training in body-based trauma therapy allows her to hold space for anything that might arise for her clients along the way.
Tanya is deeply committed to helping people uncover whatever is at the root of their psycho-emotional or physical conditions, and helping her clients to live a life of passion, freedom, and alignment to their soul calling.
She is in an ongoing apprenticeship with Dr. Gabor Maté.
It can be helpful to look at work with ayahuasca in four distinct but interconnected phases:
1) Preparation, 2) Ceremony, 3) Deep Processing, and 4) Integration
This retreat will provide extra support with Deep Processing and Integration, which will help you get the very most out of your ceremony experiences.
Preparation
Another part of preparation is developing an intention to come into ceremony with. At this retreat, we will work with you before ceremony to help hone your intention; this can provide anchoring during the ceremony and can be helpful for interpreting the teachings afterward.
It is also highly recommended, especially for first-time drinkers, that a single one-hour preparation session be done by Skype. This can help alleviate anxieties about the medicine, answer questions, get clear about guidelines, and allow you to connect with your own reasons for coming to the Temple.
Ayahuasca Ceremonies and Plant Medicine
We deeply honor and respect indigenous healing traditions of the Amazon that have evolved over thousands of years and offer the most effective ayahuasca healing experience. Our team of healers at the Temple has been carefully selected over many years. We work with some of the most respected, kind-hearted, and powerful healers from the Shipibo tribe, who are experts in ayahuasca healing and plant spirit shamanism in the Amazon.
In the Shipibo tradition, the healing process is very much focused on cleansing and purifying the energy field which surrounds us, niwe in their language, which can pick up toxic energies from our environment and traumatic issues of our past. Their encyclopedic knowledge of medicinal plants (rao) of the Amazon Rainforest allows them to heal a huge range of psycho-spiritual, emotional, and sometimes physical conditions.
The healers see ayahuasca as a nexus to the plant spirit worlds, and is not the only plant spirit they work with. The key to the depth and efficacy of this ancient healing system is by calling in and working with a plethora of other plant spirits in each ceremony that work alongside ayahuasca to affect deep healing. They do this through ancient healing practices involving incredibly beautiful ikaros (songs of the plants), intense perfumes, individually prescribed plant remedies, and powerful energetic work.
We provide potent and visionary ayahuasca sourced from deep in the rainforest in the Shipibo territories. Our ayahuasca is made from ‘cielo’ (sky / heaven) ayahuasca and chacruna with no admixtures. The ceremonies led by our healers offer the highest levels of shamanic mastery available in the Peruvian Amazon combined with an exemplary track record in terms of safety, protection, care for and support of our guests.
Deep Processing
The processing in this retreat will take the group beyond a sharing circle and into a guided inquiry process, that will serve to deepen the level of healing that is possible. Integration is also greatly assisted by having a clear understanding of the teachings you’ve received in ceremony, how those experiences connect to early childhood, and, crucially, how they relate to your current life situation— since ayahuasca always meets you where you’re currently at and shows you what needs to be seen now.
This is where the group process can be extremely helpful: not only do the facilitators help you to see your own experience more clearly, but witnessing each member of the group go through their own process greatly enhances your own awareness and understanding of your own human experience.
Integration
Integration begins the moment ceremony ends. In some ways, it is an intuitive process: much like a wound healing after a surgery, the mind and body naturally repair themselves and ‘digest’ the teachings of the medicine. You can assist this process by treating yourself with care and gentleness, and by continuing to incorporate mindfulness practices, time in nature, and other healthful behaviors into your life.
Going back into life after a retreat can be challenging. The processing at this workshop is designed to send you back into your life with tools to take on some of the challenges you will inevitably face. To maximize on your healing, we strongly recommend that you book follow-up integration sessions to help ease your transition into the new life you’ll be creating for yourself.
Whats Included:
- A high ratio of healers to guests – 5 healers per retreat
- Group size limited to 23 people
- 5 ayahuasca ceremonies over the 9 day retreat
- Intensive focus on processing and integration by an experienced team of facilitators
- A cleansing steam bath on the first day of the retreat
- Daily Jain Póiti (banos de florecimento) – cleansing, purifying and strengthening floral baths
- Vomitivos (stomach cleansing) to rid the stomach of some toxins
- All food and drink – a deliciously simple diet suitable for working with medicinal plants & ayahuasca
- Explore the jungle and see medicinal plants in their natural environment
- Group meetings to share and process your experiences
- Accommodation in comfortable tambos spread out throughout the Temple grounds (fully protected with mosquito netting, hammocks for relaxing, and compost toilets)
- Laundry service
- Translation from Shipibo and Spanish into English
- All workshops facilitated in English
- Porters to carry your luggage in and out of the Temple from the pickup location
- All transportation to and from the Temple
What’s not Included:
- Airfares (International and National)
- Airport transportation
- Travel insurance
- Accommodation in Iquitos
- Peruvian Visa costs for non EEC or USA nationals
- Personal expenses (meals and drinks in Iquitos, etc.)
Cost
Integration Intensive 9 Day Ayahuasca Retreat | US$ 2,300 |
A portion of the income from our ayahuasca retreats funds critical projects on environmental justice, sustainable development and intercultural education run by our Peruvian NGO, The Chaikuni Institute, partnering with Indigenous People in the Amazon.
Payment Terms
Deposit | US$ 1150 |
Final Installment | US$ 1150 Due 6 weeks before the retreat starts |
Paying your program cost in installments is for your convenience only. If you prefer, you may pay in full upon booking.
Terms and Advice
- We accept payments via credit card and PayPal. Credit card payments are made during the online booking process. If you select to pay via PayPal, we will issue you an invoice after your medical questionnaire has been approved. If you have made a credit card payment and later learn that you are not cleared to come for a workshop per your medical history, your payment will be fully refunded.
- We offer you the option of paying a deposit of at least 50% of the program cost to confirm your reservation. You can also pay the full workshop cost when booking.
- Your balance must be paid in full at least 6 weeks prior to the start of the workshop to guarantee your reservation. If you made a deposit with a credit card, we will charge that card automatically for the outstanding balance 6 weeks prior to the start of the workshop.
- Payments are only refundable provided we have a minimum of 8 weeks notice prior to the start of a workshop. Any refunds given will occur a USD 100.- administration fee. You may change your workshop reservation to another date at no cost or transfer your payment(s) to another participant, provided said participant has been approved to attend a workshop and that it is a minimum of 8 weeks prior to the start of the workshop.
- If original payment was made with a credit card, any refund will be credited back to the card originally charged. We are only able to refund via PayPal for other forms of payment.
- For cancellations within 8 weeks of the start of a workshop, payments will only be refunded, credited to a future date, or transferred to another participant if we can fill your place in the workshop. We will try our best to do so.
- We strongly recommend that you take out adequate travel insurance for any cancellations due to unforeseen circumstances. Squaremouth is an insurance service we can suggest that can cover not only retreat costs but the possibility to recover airfare costs too.
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.
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