Mindfulness and the Medicine: A New Paradigm in Healing
Mindfulness and the Medicine: A New Paradigm in Healing is an ayahuasca retreat that will combine the sophisticated healing work of two Shipibo healers with in-depth practices of mindfulness, yoga, and other psycho-spiritual practices.
Ayahuasca research has found that people who work with ayahuasca exhibit improved mental qualities similar to those who practice mindfulness meditation, including less judgmental thinking and reactivity. It has been suggested that this may be one of the factors contributing to the therapeutic effect of ayahuasca.
This retreat will be offered as a 14-Day retreat or a 23-Day retreat. Guests of the 14-Day retreat will join the 23-Day guests for the first 14 days of the 23-Day retreat.
In this retreat, we will work on understanding and cultivating these and other beneficial qualities alongside the ayahuasca ceremonies. Not only will you learn how to use applied mindfulness skills to discover a new sense of self that is more resilient and peaceful, but you will learn how mindfulness is directly relevant to working with ayahuasca, and how the two can be mutually beneficial to you. The feedback from the two previous workshops applying these approaches has been overwhelmingly positive.
You will learn how mindfulness can deepen and enhance your experience of working with ayahuasca and how to directly apply these practices during your ayahuasca ceremonies in the workshop. You will be supported in reflecting on what you are learning throughout the workshop, using applied mindfulness practices and a range of other psycho-spiritual practices to help you integrate your ayahuasca experiences, and learn how to carry what you experience in your ceremonies into your life.
Both traditional and ayahuasca-specific approaches to mindfulness will be included in this program. The traditional elements include the development of a clear understanding of mindfulness and specific practices with which to cultivate mindfulness in your life. You will learn in a practical step-by-step manner how, when, and why to “let go” and how to recognize and release the unhelpful habits of your mind. You will have access to both group classes on one to one consultations throughout your retreat.
You will learn how to compassionately investigate the origins and effects of your current habits and challenges, as well as how to cultivate new and more mindful responses within your thoughts, memories, emotions, body sensations, behaviors and relationships. These are known to help people increase their self-acceptance, recognize the onset of negative states of mind and break out of them faster, and to cultivate positive states of mind in their place. This can profoundly change the way you relate to your own experience of life, to others, and to the world around you.
Ayahuasca-specific adaptations within the Medicine and Mindfulness framework include:
- Working mindfully with intense mental imagery and visions
- Working mindfully with strong emotions and body sensations
- Working mindfully with difficult memories and traumas
- Using mindful curiosity to consciously navigate your ayahuasca experience
- Integrating ayahuasca experiences using a mindfulness framework
- Working with other self enquiry techniques to process and prepare you for what arises in ceremony
- Using mindfulness to help you intentionally approach the life you want, instead of unconsciously avoiding the life you fear
The material in this program has been designed to respect, honor, and be compatible with the Shipibo traditions and the work of the Maestros and Maestras, who skillfully guide the medicine where it needs to go, and perform high-level precision surgeries using their icaros and other tools, removing energetic blockages and freeing you from past traumas. In fact, you will find that bringing an actively alert and focused mindful presence to your ceremonies will make our Maestros very happy as their work can be much more effective!
The Onanya, Ayahuasca, and the Master Plants
We deeply honor and respect the indigenous healing traditions of the Amazon that have evolved over thousands of years and offer the most effective ayahuasca healing experience. We work with some of the most respected, kind-hearted and powerful healers (Onanya) from the Shipibo tribe, who are experts in ayahuasca healing and plant-spirit shamanism of the Amazon.
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 can pick 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), intense perfumes, plant remedies and powerful energetic work.
The Shipibo tradition is a system of plant-spirit shamanism that facilitates healing from a vast number of different plant and tree spirits, who transmit healing energies through the ikaros sung by the healers in ceremonies. The Onanya see ayahuasca as a nexus to the plant-spirit worlds, and it is not the only plant spirit they work with. The key to the depth and efficacy of this ancient healing system is to call in and work with a plethora of other plant spirits in each ceremony to affect deep healing.
While you will receive energetic healing from many different plants spirits in every ceremony, the only plant brew our guests drink in ceremony is ayahuasca. We provide potent and visionary ayahuasca sourced from deep in the rainforest of 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.
Focus on Integration
Ayahuasca helps dissolve the illusory self and significantly increases awareness of self-constructed boundaries, as well as highlights and helps 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 on your shadow and helping you to become aware of unconscious patterns. Ayahuasca helps you become intimate with your fears and embrace your shadow.
This is the slow path towards freedom from fear, resulting in increasingly feeling lighter, brighter, more vital, more compassionate, more in touch with yourself and the world around you. Ayahuasca will support you throughout your process for many months, even years after your retreat. Through regular group discussions and instruction throughout the workshop, followed by the guidance available through individual Skype sessions offered by Sean and our team of integration facilitators after your retreat, we will support you significantly with your overall integration process, which is as important as the treatment you receive during the retreat.
Sean Chiddy
He spent a year at the Temple of the Way of Light in 2016 doing deep work with the medicine as well as teaching mindfulness and healing meditation, a series of workshops called “The psychology of healing” and offering one-to-one integration sessions to guests on site. As a member of the Temple’s Integration team, Sean also offers retreat preparation and follow-up/integration sessions by Skype.
With many years of personal and professional experience of healing work in various traditions, he understands that there are many ways to heal, but that all start from a willingness to approach rather than avoid what is arising, and to learn to trust in the capacity of our mind to reorganize and integrate what has been hurt or disconnected, and in so doing to move towards an increasing sense of peace, wholeness and joy in being alive.
Sean will help 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, become aware of false core beliefs, embody teachings from the plants, incorporate visionary experiences, and move from the head to the heart.
A Word from Sean following our first Mindfulness and the Medicine Retreat in 2017:
Reviews from our first Mindfulness and the Medicine Retreat in 2017:
What’s included:
- 7 ayahuasca ceremonies during the 23-Day retreat, or 5 ayahuasca ceremonies during the 14-Day retreat
- Intimate ceremony group size limited to 12 people
- Ayahuasca ceremonies and traditional Amazonian plant medicine healing with Maestra Lila and Maestro Damian
- Group and individual sessions on Mindfulness and the Psychology of Healing with Sean Chiddy
- 2 highly experienced plant medicine retreat facilitators
- Daily yoga classes
- Regular 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
- A jungle walk to see medicinal plants in their natural environment
- Individual consultation with the healers and your facilitators
- Plant remedies individually prescribed by the healers
- Group processing and integration meetings
- Individual accommodation, fully protected with mosquito netting, hammocks for relaxing, and private verandas
- Laundry service
- Translation from Shipibo and Spanish to English
- All workshops facilitated in English
- Porters to carry your luggage in and out of the Temple from the boat
- All transportation to and from the Temple from the pickup/dropoff 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)
The following schedule is an example of what the 23-Day Retreat will look like. Guests who are on the 14-Day Retreat will sit an additional ceremony than what is listed on the schedule below, for example, on Day 6. This will bring their total number of ceremonies up to 5. Guests on the 14-Day Retreat will depart the Temple at approximately 10am on Day 14 of the retreat.
Day 1
12:00pm | Arrival at the Temple, Accommodation Assignment, Floral Baths, followed by Lunch |
2:00pm | Group Meeting – Opening Circle, Site Orientation, Introduction to Staff and Integrative Practices |
6:00pm | Dinner |
7:00pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Introduction Session |
Day 2
7:00am | Pre-vomitivo Yoga |
7:30am | Vomitivo |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:00am | Group Meeting – Meet the Healers, Discussion about Ayahuasca |
1:00pm | Lunch |
2:00pm | Group Consultation |
5:00pm | Floral Baths |
6:00pm | Pre-Ceremony Yin Yoga |
8:00pm | 1st Ceremony |
Day 3
7:15am | Yoga |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:00am | Individual Physical Consultations |
11:00am | Self-Inquiry Session |
1:00pm | Lunch |
2:00pm | Individual Physical Consultations |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
6:00pm | Dinner |
Day 4
7:15am | Yoga |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:00am | Mantra Session |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
6:00pm | Dinner |
7:00pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Practice |
Day 5
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Nada Yoga |
5:00pm | Floral baths |
6:00pm | Pre Ceremony Yin Yoga |
8:00pm | 2nd Ceremony |
Day 6 *SILENT DAY*
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Practice |
6:00pm | Dinner |
Day 7
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:00am | Group Sharing |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
6:00pm | Dinner |
7:00pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Practice |
Day 8
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Qi gong |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
5:00pm | Floral Baths |
6:00pm | Pre-Ceremony Yin Yoga |
8:00pm | 3rd Ceremony |
Day 9
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Singing |
6:00pm | Dinner |
Day 10
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Self-Inquiry Session |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
6:00pm | Dinner |
7:00pm | Mindfulness Meditation Practice |
Day 11
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
1:00pm | Lunch |
2:30pm | Jungle Plant Medicine Walk with the Healers |
5:00pm | Floral Baths |
6:00pm | Pre-Ceremony Yin Yoga |
8:00pm | 4th Ceremony |
Day 12 *SILENT DAY*
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Group Meeting |
6:00pm | Dinner |
Day 13
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:00am | Group Sharing |
1:00pm | Lunch |
2:30pm | Walk to the Lapuna Tree |
6:00pm | Dinner |
Day 14
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Movement Session |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
5:00pm | Floral Baths |
6:00pm | Pre-Ceremony Yin Yoga |
8:00pm | 5th Ceremony |
Day 15
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Group Meeting |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
6:00pm | Dinner |
Day 16
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Qi gong |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
6:00pm | Dinner |
7:00pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Practice |
Day 17
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Self-Inquiry Session |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
5:00pm | Floral Baths |
6:00pm | Pre-Ceremony Yin Yoga |
8:00pm | 6th Ceremony |
Day 18
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Pranayama |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
6:00pm | Dinner |
Day 19
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Self-Inquiry Session |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
6:00pm | Dinner |
7:00pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Practice |
Day 20
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:00am | Group Meeting – Arkanas, Post-diet, Integration |
1:00pm | Lunch |
5:00pm | Floral Baths |
6:00pm | Pre-Ceremony Yin Yoga |
8:00pm | 7th Ceremony |
Day 21
7:15am | Yoga |
8:00am | Plant Remedies |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:30am | Self-Inquiry Session |
1:00pm | Lunch |
3:30pm | Mindfulness and the Medicine Session |
6:00pm | Dinner |
Day 22
7:15am | Yoga |
9:00am | Breakfast |
10:00am | Shipibo Market |
1:00pm | Lunch with Maestros |
2:00pm | Final Group Share and Closing Circle |
6:00pm | Dinner |
Day 23
8:00am | Breakfast |
9:00am | Departure to Iquitos |
Cost
23-Day Retreat | US$ 2,950 |
14-Day Retreat | US$ 2,100 |
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 | 50% of total workshop cost |
Final Installment | Remaining balance 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.
IMPORTANT APPLICATION INFO:
**All registrations must be made from a computer – we do not have mobile capability for our medical questionnaires at this time.
Please choose your preferred date below and fill in the necessary information on the following pages in order to complete your application. Once you have submitted the application and we have received your payment and medical information, we will let you know if your application has been approved within about a week. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected].
Please do not book flights or make any travel arrangements until your application and medical information has been reviewed and you have been approved to attend.
This retreat will be offered as a 14-Day retreat or a 23-Day retreat. Guests of the 14-Day retreat will join the 23-Day guests for the first 14 days of the 23-Day retreat.
23-Day Mindfulness and the Medicine Ayahuasca Retreats:
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14-Day Mindfulness and the Medicine Ayahuasca Retreats:
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