LGBTQ+ Ayahuasca & Compassionate Inquiry Retreat
This special LGBTQ+ retreat will provide a safe, welcoming, and compassionate environment where participants can feel comfortable being who they are, and within that, experience deep healing and individual transformation that reaches into the roots of trauma through the powerful synthesis of ancient Amazon healing traditions and Compassionate Inquiry methodology.
This retreat offers an immersion in traditional Shipibo plant-spirit healing, complemented with yoga classes and Gabor Mate’s Compassionate Inquiry, and provides highly effective integration guidance to bring profound and lasting transformation into your life. Alongside the ikaros and the plethora of plant doctors present in each ceremony, the Shipibo healers bring decades of training and wisdom that is passed through many generations, granting ayahuasca deeper access into the system so that energetic blockages that disconnect you from your true self can be cleared.
“Our wounds are the doorway to rediscovering our true nature” – Paul Levy
The design of our 12-day program is truly the culmination of all of our work facilitating healing and integration with ayahuasca with over 11,000 guests since 2007, and we are thrilled to offer it now in a retreat especially for LGBTQ+ people. Through clearing the past and bringing energetic cleansing to your body, mind, and soul, a transformational process initiates, or further deepens, a long-term journey of self-reflection, self-discovery, and spiritual awakening.
Who Is This Retreat For?
This unique program has been designed for all those on LGBTQ+ spectrum, at any stage in their journey with sexuality. It’s truly a joy for us to welcome the LGBTQ+ community to the Temple of the Way of Light for a traditional Shipibo ayahuasca retreat in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest.
Queer sexuality is increasingly accepted in some countries in North America, Europe, and elsewhere. Even if you are fortunate enough to live in a country of tolerance, you may still struggle with challenging feelings, experiences, and memories of traumatic events related to your gender or sexuality. This retreat offers you the opportunity to explore that part of you, and to discover, heal, and let go of that which is in the way of you living a life of fulfillment and authenticity. This retreat is specifically designed to have you be who you came here to be, and give you tools to live that life for yourself and for the world.
Please note: This is not an activist retreat. While political and academic discussions on LGBTQ+ topics are important and benefit all of us, this is not the purpose of this retreat. Our intention will be to look within ourselves and connect with our inner experience of all that is happening in each moment. We will promote an inward dive – a healthy introspection where we can remember our essential wholeness, and an opportunity to do our own personal work, cultivating inner strength and authenticity.
The Program
There will be six night-time ayahuasca ceremonies led by a team of four highly skilled Shipibo healers. Shipibo plant-spirit healing is an ancient and sophisticated healthcare system that reaches into the psychological, psychic, emotional, and energetic roots of trauma, blockages, limiting views, and self-defeating patterns. The healers operate in ceremony as a plant-spirit guided medical team, each delivering on their particular skills and specialities, and provide individualized attention throughout the retreat to participants specific to their needs.
The day-time sessions will build on and compliment the deep healing experiences in ceremony. Through Gabor Mate’s Compassionate Inquiry approach, your facilitators will guide you as you explore how you created your world as you have. This work offers you the possibility of bringing unexpected opportunities and powerful awareness into your life, your relationships, and your work in the world.
Traditional Shipibo Medicine: Onanya, Ayahuasca, and the Master Plants of the Amazon
Our exceptional team of healers (called Onanya in Shipibo, meaning “those who have wisdom”) has been carefully selected over many years to work at the Temple of the Way of Light. We are blessed to work with some of the most respected, kind-hearted, and powerful Onanya from the Shipibo tribe, who are experts in ayahuasca healing and plant-spirit curanderismo of the Amazon.
Shipibo medicine is a highly sophisticated healing tradition that harnesses the healing energies of a vast number of plant and tree-spirits of the Amazon. According to the Onanya, it is the plant-spirits who direct the process, transmitting energetic medicine in the form of ikaros (the songs of the plants) that are sung through the healers in ayahuasca ceremonies.
Without bringing together a team of plant spirits, the healing work of ayahuasca alone would be limited, and unable to reach the energetic roots of heavy energies. While the only plant brew you will drink in ceremony is ayahuasca, you will receive energetic healing from many different plant-spirits in every ceremony.
One of the main functions of Oni for the Onanya is to enable them to perceive energetic blockages in the people that they are healing. Traditionally, in Shipibo communities, the person receiving healing would typically not drink ayahuasca. For the Onanya, Oni is a nature-based technology that enables them to scan and see the energetic body and where heavy energies are located.
They then focus on cleansing and clearing the energy field that surrounds us (niwe, in Shipibo) which picks up toxic energies from the environment and heavy residual energies from traumatic experiences in our past. The Shipibo healers’ encyclopedic knowledge of the medicinal plants (rao) of the Amazon Rainforest allows them to heal a huge range of psychic, psychological, emotional, and physical conditions that are typically all rooted in energetic causes.
Experienced Facilitation
Our experienced facilitators carry out an important role as bridges and translators between our healers and guests. Critically, 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 every ceremony. We also offer instruction on how to sustain and cultivate any breakthroughs and insights received during your retreat and how to ground transformative healing experiences into 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.
Públio Valle – Lead Facilitator
Públio was born in Brazil and has dedicated his life to meditation, yoga, and ayahuasca for over 15 years. He earned a degree in Yoga Therapy at Swami Vivekananda University in Bangalore, India, where he also worked at a Yoga Hospital. He trained in meditation in several traditions while in India, completed an Indian Psychology Course in Pondicherry, and studied meditation at Pa Auk Monastery in Burma. He worked as a volunteer for two years at the Alice Project School, an institution that teaches dharma and meditation inspired by Tibetan wisdom to children. Since his first encounter with ayahuasca in Peru with the Shipibo in 2004, he has also worked with the medicine with different traditional groups in Brazil, including Santo Daime. He has been working at the Temple since 2014 as a facilitator, yoga and meditation teacher, Integration Therapist, and more recently, as general manager, and is currently training in Compassionate Inquiry with Gabor Mate. Having experienced the deep and rich processes that ayahuasca ignites within, Públio has a sincere commitment to share the teachings of the jungle and of ancient traditions, and to promote health and well-being in all dimensions of human life. publiovalle.com
Juliana Bizare – Lead Facilitator
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. 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. She brings this same intention to her relationships in general. 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. Being Brazilian, ayahuasca has always been present in her life one way or another. She started 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.
Tony Hoare – Support Facilitator
Tony has supported ayahuasca retreats since 2006 and has participated in hundreds of ceremonies. He worked with Gabor Mate over a period of 10 years and supported 16 of Gabor’s nine-day retreats by providing organizational support and integration work. In 2018, he was invited to train with Gabor Mate’s Compassionate Inquiry model and became one of the founding facilitators. Over the last three years, Tony has also worked with Joe Tafur supporting ayahuasca retreats. Tony has a foundation in somatic approaches to healing that include Compassionate Inquiry and Hakomi, has a counseling practice where he works with people to explore the impact of early childhood trauma, and provides integration support for people working with ayahuasca. Tony’s focus is on kindness and honesty, which guide his practice. Tony lives in Vancouver with his husband Ben where they live in love with each other and in harmony with the land.
Shipibo Plant-Spirit Shamanism
The incredible mastery of Shipibo healers brings practices that form a sophisticated system of sacred science – a natural, energetically focused, soul-based, and spirit-assisted healthcare system.
In the Shipibo tradition, the healing process is focused on cleansing and purifying the energy field that surrounds us – or niwe in their language – which picks up toxic energies from the environment and the traumatic issues of our past. The Shipibo healers’ 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. They do this through ancient healing practices involving incredibly beautiful ikaros (songs of the plants), plant and flower baths, intense perfumes, and powerful energetic work.
Our team of Onanya have been carefully selected over many years to work on our healing retreats at the Temple. They bring a rich cultural and medicinal legacy, time-honored rituals, intricate practices, an expansive cosmology, an encyclopedic knowledge of medicinal plants of the Amazon, and a far-reaching ancestral lineage to the healing process. 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.
Integration
All of the daytime work we will be doing in this retreat will give you integration tools to provide a pathway and create a life filled with inspiration, connection, and purpose after leaving the Temple.
After nearly fifteen years of facilitating ayahuasca healing for approximately 11,000 guests, 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 back into our lives what we learn about ourselves when working with ayahuasca. 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. This is the process of integration.
What’s Included:
- 6 ayahuasca ceremonies over the 12 days
- A high ratio of healers to guests – 4 healers per retreat
- Regular group integration and processing sessions
- Group size limited to 23 people
- An skilled team of facilitators to guide you with processing and integrating your experiences
- A cleansing steam bath on the first day of the retreat
- Jain Póiti (banos de florecimento) – cleansing, purifying, and strengthening floral baths
- Energetic healing massages (where necessary, as part of your healing process)
- All food and drink – a deliciously simple diet suitable for working with medicinal plants
- A jungle walk to see medicinal plants in their natural environment
- Individual consultations with the healers and your facilitators
- Plant remedies individually prescribed by the healers
- Completely private and individual accommodation in simple bungalows
- Laundry service
- Translation from Shipibo / Spanish to English
- All workshops facilitated in English
- Porters to carry your luggage to and from the pickup location and the Temple
- All transportation to and from the Temple from the pickup location in Iquitos
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.)
This is only an example of what the schedule might look like for this retreat.
Day One
| 11:00 am | Arrive at the Temple, Floral Baths, Lunch |
| 2:00 pm | Group Session: Orientation |
| 4:00 pm | Vapor Baths |
| 6:00 pm | Dinner |
Day Two
| 9:00 am | Breakfast |
| 10:00 am | Group Session |
| 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm | Group Consultations with the Maestras and Maestros |
| 5:00 pm | Floral baths |
| 6:30 pm | Preparation for Ceremony, Yin Yoga, Quiet/Personal/Meditation Time in Maloka |
| 8:00 pm | 1st Ceremony |
Day Three (silent morning)
| 10:00 pm | Individual Physical Consultations with the Healers |
| 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm | Group Session |
| 5:00 pm | Floral Baths |
| 6:30 pm | Preparation for Ceremony, Yin Yoga, Quiet/Personal/Meditation Time in Maloka |
| 8:00 pm | 2nd Ceremony |
Day Four (silent day)
| 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 5:00 pm | Plant Remedies (as prescribed by the Maestras) |
| 6:00 pm | Dinner |
Day Five
| 8:00 am | Plant Remedies (as prescribed by the Maestras) |
| 9:00 am | Breakfast |
| 10:00 am | Group Session |
| 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm | Time for relaxation and introspection |
| 5:00 pm | Floral baths |
| 6:30 pm | Preparation for Ceremony, Yin Yoga, Quiet/Personal/Meditation Time in Maloka |
| 8:00 pm | 3rd Ceremony |
Day Six (silent morning)
| 8:00 am | Plant Remedies (as prescribed by the Maestras) |
| 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm | Group Session |
| 5:00 pm | Floral Baths |
| 6:30 pm | Preparation for Ceremony, Yin Yoga, Quiet/Personal/Meditation Time in Maloka |
| 8:00 pm | 4th Ceremony |
Day Seven (silent morning)
| 8:00 am | Plant Remedies (as prescribed by the Maestras) |
| 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm | Group Session |
| 5:00 pm | Plant Remedies (as prescribed by the Maestras) |
| 6:00 pm | Dinner |
Day Eight
| 8:00 am | Plant Remedies (as prescribed by the Maestras) |
| 9:00 am | Breakfast |
| 10:00 am | Group Session |
| 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm | Jungle Walk with the Healers |
| 5:00 pm | Floral Baths |
| 6:30 pm | Preparation for Ceremony, Yin Yoga, Quiet/Personal/Meditation Time in Maloka |
| 8:00 pm | 5th Ceremony |
Day Nine (silent morning)
| 8:00 am | Plant Remedies (as prescribed by the Maestras) |
| 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm | Group Session |
| 5:00 pm | Floral Baths |
| 6:30 pm | Preparation for Ceremony, Yin Yoga, Quiet/Personal/Meditation Time in Maloka |
| 8:00 pm | 6th Ceremony (Arkana) |
Day Ten (silent morning)
| 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm | Ayni walk |
| 6:00 pm | Dinner |
Day Eleven
| 8:00 am | Shipibo market |
| 9:00 am | Breakfast |
| 11:00 am | Permaculture walk |
| 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm | Group photos at the maloka with the healers |
| 2:30 pm | Final Session |
| 6:00 pm | Goodbye Dinner with the Healers |
Day Twelve
| 9:00 am | Breakfast |
| 10:00am | Leave for Iquitos |
| ~1:00 pm | Arrive in Iquitos |
Cost
| LGBTQ+ Ayahuasca and Compassionate Inquiry Retreat: | $3,700 |
A portion of the income from our ayahuasca retreats funds 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
- Upon Application: Your card will be charged $1 when you submit your registration. If we cannot approve your registration for any reason, your card will be refunded the $1.
- Upon Application Approval: If your application is approved, your card will be charged for the remainder of the 50% deposit (unless retreat starts within 6 weeks, your card will be charged or the full amount).
- 6 weeks Prior to Retreat Start: Your final payment is due and will be automatically charged to your credit card, unless you make the payment before then.
Important Terms and Advice
- All retreat payments are non-refundable.
- Once your registration is approved, your credit card will be charged for the 50% deposit payment or full payment if the retreat starts within 6 weeks.
- Your balance must be paid in full at least 6 weeks prior to the start of the program to guarantee your space. Your credit card will be charged automatically for any outstanding balance 6 weeks prior to the start of the program.
- If we are forced to cancel any programs as a result of the pandemic situation or international travel restrictions, all payments will be either transferred to personal credit to be used for a future program at a later date (with no expiration date), or you may move to a different program at that time.
- We strongly recommend all guests purchase flight and travel insurance to cover all contingencies and nonrefundable deposits and expenses.
- For cancelations more than 8 weeks prior to the start of a program, you may transfer to a different program or transfer your payment to personal credit to be used for a future program in the next 2 years.
- For cancelations within 8 weeks of the start of a program, you may only transfer to a different program or transfer your payment to personal credit to be used for a future program in the next 2 years if we can fill your place in the program. We almost always have waiting lists and will try our best to do so, however it may be difficult to find someone to replace your space if it is close to the start of the program.
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. Once you are approved, your payment is due within 24 hours 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 into the retreat. In consideration of the changing global situation and international travel restrictions, we strongly recommend not making any travel arrangements until close to the start of the retreat and that all guests purchase travel insurance.
If we are forced to cancel any retreats as a result of the changing global situation or international travel restrictions, retreat payments will not be refunded. All payments will be either transferred to personal credit to be used for a future program at a later date (with no expiration date), or you may move to a different program at that time.
| Dates | Status | Register |
|---|---|---|
| November 8 - 19, 2023 | Full (wait list) | Join waiting list |
